Moved by the Law of Probability
by fringeperson
Summary: The probability of Harry Potter living a completely normal life was low, but that was okay. Normality is over-rated and boring anyway. He's managed to do some pretty interesting things with his life since the war. Don't own, not canon compliant.
1. Chapter 1

People get Murphy's Law wrong a lot. It's been boiled down into the phrase: "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong." There are a lot of people out there who claim it's actually: "If it can't go wrong, it still can go wrong, and probably will." Actually, Murphy's Law is more accurately represented as follows: "If there are two ways for something to be done, where one option will bring success and the other failure, then the variant where failure is the result is more likely be the first one taken." It is because of Murphy's Law that power plugs have a clearly defined fashion by which they are inserted into the outlet. Some even say that it was actually _because_ of the _first_ power plug of real importance _not_ having any way of telling if it was being put in the right way around or not that Murphy's Law came into being in the first place. Murphy's Law was meant to be applied to machines, mechanical accoutrement of various varieties, inanimate objects, and non-living things.

Not carbon-based life-forms and their social interactions. Though, on occasion, it did seem to apply there as well.

~oOo~

There's a funny thing about the way people age. Up until about the age of twenty-some, there's definite changes that occur in each passing year. From twenty-some to thirty-some, not so much, though there's a difference between twenty-some and forty-some, and less difference between thirty-some and forty-some... but those changes, though happening slowly, still visibly happen and people _notice_. Once a person is past sixty-some, on the other hand, people _stop_ noticing. By that time there's masses of grey hair and wrinkles and possibly even some of that infamous 'old person smell' hanging about if they've got joint problems that mean they can't wash themselves as thoroughly as they once could.

So, when Harry died at seventeen, met Death and was told that thanks to his new status as 'Master of Death' (a la reuniting all the Hollows) he _wouldn't die_ (or at least, he wouldn't _stay_ dead if he _did_ die) Harry quickly started talking technicalities with the anthropomorphic personification that had just claimed deference to _him_. Harry might have let it be said – and often – that he wasn't the most intelligent wizard of his generation, but... there was a _reason_ (quite apart from a little bit of Tom Riddle attached to him at the time) that the Hat had wanted to put Harry in Slytherin in his first year of Hogwarts.

Ten years of living with the Dursleys had taught Harry – and taught him _very_ well – to _hide_ his achievements. To _dumb down_ his tests and assignments. To _not_ draw attention to himself – of _any_ kind if he could help it. While he couldn't help it nearly so much in the Magical World as he could in the Non-Magical World, he _had_ managed to pass himself off as a lot less intelligent (and a lot less _learned_ and _well-read_) than he really was.

In the end, they settled on Harry being allowed to age until his mid-thirties. It was a compromise that Harry was much more satisfied with than Death's original proposition of him not ageing any more from the moment Harry's soul rejoined his _seventeen-year-old_ body. Some people might be out for eternal life and youth, but _not_ Harry. Mid-thirties was a good age for blending into crowds unnoticed, people wouldn't mind if he didn't age _too_ much if he was stuck at that point, and he could grow and/or shave as according to how young or old he _wanted_ to look if he was in his thirties with a few lines set in. Besides, mid-thirties would still have him in his prime, providing he kept fit.

~oOo~

When Harry opened his eyes, he did not (as a great many would have expected) immediately return to the battlefield. Instead, he apparated to Gringotts. There, he emptied his accounts. His trust vault, the greater Potter Family Vault that held more material assets than money, and the Black Family Vault that had been left to him by Sirius. Oh, he didn't empty them _completely_. No, that would be suspicious. To say nothing of pissing off the goblins if he removed his entire wealth from their bank. They were a bit more accommodating when he explained that he intended to (as far as the Magical World was concerned anyway) 'stay dead'. After all, there had been plenty of witnesses to his death just an hour before.

After that, he waited out the 'Final Battle' in a secure location until news of Neville (of all people) killing Voldemort made the front page of the Daily Prophet. Harry was glad for his once-shy friend, being recognised as a hero and all would be good for him, he was sure. Once the furore had died down, Harry grabbed up several differently-flavoured vials of polyjuice potion and went to do a lot of shopping. He had plans of leaving the UK after all, so he'd be stocking up on everything that Diagon Alley had to offer him before he left.

Including a thin little guide to all the magical shopping locations around the world. That would come in very handy when he made his move. It was also useful in that it indicated that only the wizards and witches in the UK, France and Scandinavia used a different currency to the non-magical population.

That his little shopping spree helped to bolster the economy a little bit didn't hurt, and he made absolutely sure to stock up most particularly on items from the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Defence Range. Like their Peruvian Darkness Powder – he got enough of that to last him until he could find (or figure out) the recipe to make it for himself.

Which, incidentally, put Peru up near the top on his list of 'places to visit'. Places he would be visiting through use of non-magical methods. He'd take a train, take a boat, take a plane, heck, he'd even ride a _goat_ (to go with the short list from the old song _Cuanta la Gusta_) though he'd probably keep that last one for 'only if he had to'. Horses, donkeys, camels or similar native variants that were more normally _trained_ for transportation would be much preferred to goats, as far as Harry was concerned. Or any other animal with horns/antlers/pointy bits on its head and a generally unhelpful attitude in regards to being ridden.

Regardless of goats or similar though, travel the non-magical way would allow Harry plenty of time to study the various texts he had bought for himself on his last spending-spree in England. One which, incidentally, took him outside of _just_ Diagon Alley. So, while he spent time on the train that would take him to Wales, Harry started studying.

When he _got_ to Wales, he learned even more: he charmed a metalsmith into taking him on. From six in the morning until one in the afternoon, Harry learned everything there was to know about various metals and how to work them. After that time, Harry dedicated himself to his magical studies. Mondays was transfiguration, Tuesdays was charms, curses, hexes and jinxes, Wednesdays was potions, and Thursdays was studying runes (including hieroglyphs) and the cultures they had come from. Fridays he packed up and left for a weekend exploring the country. Three years of that had Harry proficient in working nearly all metals, fluent (though not without accent) in the Welsh language, and ready to move on to his next destination.

Ireland.

In Ireland, it was much of the same routine for Harry. He chose a trade, found a tradesman, and learned from him in the mornings before dedicating himself to his magical studies in the afternoons and going exploring on the weekends. After learning about carpentry for three years in Ireland, Harry moved down to Spain, where he learned the language through immersion, a little help from a handy translation book, and a helpful old potter who spoke both English _and_ Spanish. A helpful old potter who was willing to teach Harry all there was to know about clay, about shaping it and moulding it and all the different ways it was fired in the kiln.

Harry moved to France after three years in Spain, and in France he had to change his routine – studying magic in the mornings and learning about making alcohol in the afternoons. Wine in particular, but a little experimentation and searching the internet (something introduced to him by his French wine-making teacher) taught Harry enough about other sorts of alcohol as well that he felt sure he could make more than _just_ wine if he cared to. Of course, learning to make wine means learning to grow grapes, and on a grand scale, so Harry learns about farming as consequence to that, and about budgeting a farm and business as a further consequence.

After France, twelve years after he'd gotten out of England, Harry went to Germany. The first thing he did in Germany was get a series of special tattoos across his back. The 'pattern' was a series of runes. A way Harry had figured out for himself to be able to turn into more than just _one_ animal. If they were translated, the runes Harry had on his skin in black ink would read 'air change, water change, earth change, fire change' – roughly anyway – and by sending his magic to any specific mark, he would be able to change into an animal of that element. Well, except for the fire one, that was the mark that would help him turn back into himself, fire here representing the human spirit.

Harry spent three years in Germany after getting tattooed learning from a mechanic who owned his own garage. He'd been on his way _out_ of Germany – hiking through some of their remaining forested area – when he saw two figures coming towards him from the sky.

He was _very _near to where they semi-crash-landed (he was at the _top_ of the rocky outcropping after all – he'd curled up there in the form of a wolf for the night), but managed to get the slight ringing in his ears to stop in time to hear a slightly breathless, _ever-so-slightly_ pained, and _very_ amused (to say nothing of _sarcastic_) voice say: "Oh, I missed you too."

Without even looking, Harry decided he _liked_ this person, who could be presumably hauled out of a craft, without a parachute, slammed into the ground, and then _joke_ out a greeting. Well, he liked his sense of humour at least. Then he rolled his furry, currently-wolf-shaped body around on his bit-of-dirt-surrounded-by-rock-in-a-high-place and looked down at the two people he'd spotted as they fell from the sky without a parachute and (apparently unharmed) were stopping to have a not-entirely-pleasant chat.

An absolutely _fascinating_ not-entirely-pleasant chat.

"Do I look to be in a gaming mood?" demanded the one who was still upright – armour on his top half, short beard over the entire bottom half of his face, light coloured hair (Harry would _guess_ blonde, but being a wolf at that moment he only saw in greys and smell) a cape hanging from his shoulders and a stupidly massive hammer in one hand.

The one on the ground, dark hair, layers of fabric that were intricately put together, clean-shaven, grunted as he tilted his head up to look at the other man. "You should thank me," he said. "With the Bifrost gone, how much energy did the Allfather have to muster to conjure you here, to your _precious_ Earth?" he asked as he slowly pulled himself up, off the ground. His tone was mildly derisive by the end, where before it had been sarcastically fond.

Now, those words – Bifrost, Allfather – _those_ were words that Harry knew from when he'd been studying all things related to Norse runes (which meant mythology, of course, and _damn_ that had been fascinating! Why couldn't Binns have talked about some of _that_ stuff? Then again, Binns could have made the apocalypse sound as boring as a snail watching paint dry).

The guy with the hammer slammed it into the ground, clearly frustrated. "I thought you dead," he said as he grabbed the other man.

"Did you mourn?" asked the darker one.

"We all did," the light-haired one answered. "Our father -"

"_Your_ father," the dark-haired one cut in, raising a finger between them to highlight his point before removing the other's hands. "He did tell you my true parentage, did he not?" he asked as he started to walk away, a hand at the small of his back. Clearly he'd been slammed into the ground quite solidly.

"We were raised together," objected the light-haired one. "We played together, we _fought_ together," he continued as he started to follow after the other man. "Do you remember none of that?"

"I remember a shadow," the dark-haired man answered solemnly, turning back to face his light-haired apparently-adopted brother. "Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss. I who was, and _should_ be, king!"

An adopted brother who he apparently wasn't getting along with these days.

"So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights?" the light-haired man asked.

Harry couldn't help but notice the expression on the dark-haired man's face. Really, it was the only face he could see from that angle, so it had his full attention. Wolf eyes may not be able to see in colour, but they sure as _hell_ saw in _detail_, even in the low light.

"No. The Earth is under my protection, Loki."

Ooh, now _there_ was a juicy name. Made everything fit into place too. Loki. The dark-haired man was the trickster god of Norse myth. How... how very _his damn luck_. He'd managed to go this long without any trouble finding him too. Beyond having to fast-talk his way out of being punched in the face because some guy's girl decided to make eyes at him from across the floor of an establishment where alcohol was sold. Okay, when he'd been reading up on Norse canon he'd become a bit of a fan of Loki's – sympathetic to not only his plight but the what-all that his kids had been subjected to (and really, it looked like there were _no_ good father-figures in the Norse canon) – but there was a difference between liking a god in theory and actually _meeting_ the guy.

Loki, for his part, laughed a cruelly amused laugh. "And you're doing a _marvellous_ job with that," he said sarcastically. "The humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly fret. I mean to _rule_ them, as why should I not?"

"You think yourself above them?" the light-haired man asked. And really, Harry was going to take a stab in the dark and guess he was Thor. What with the out-of-the-blue lightning storm just before they'd showed up and the very big hammer.

Loki blinked a little in surprise at what (from the expression of his face) he clearly counted as a stupid question. "Well, yes," he answered, softly, flatly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Then you miss the truth of ruling, brother. A throne would suit you ill," the light-haired probably-Thor said.

It was clearly the wrong thing to say, since Loki snarled and pushed past the slightly-larger man and stalked up the little rocky outcropping they were on.

"I've seen worlds you've never known about!" he snapped. "I have grown, _Odinson_ -" he growled and spat the name like it was an insult, turning at the same time so that the other could see the hate-filled expression on his face, "- in my exile. I have seen the true power of the Tesseract, and when I wield it -"

"Who showed you this power?" the light-haired, probably-Thor, so far called 'Odinson', asked – cutting across Loki's words as he slowly followed up the slight slope of the rocky precipice they yet shared. "Who controls the Would-be King?"

"I am a king!" Loki yelled, enraged.

"Not here!" the other snapped back immediately, just as vehemently as he grabbed Loki by both biceps. "You give up the Tesseract! You give up this poisonous dream!" Then, more tenderly, he moved one hand to very near Loki's neck and begged: "You come home."

Loki smiled a moment, as though he was touched emotionally by that plea, before he answered. "I don't have it."

The probably-Thor immediately released him, a scowl on his face as he summoned his massive hammer from where he'd shoved it into the ground.

"You need the Cube to bring me home. But I've sent it off, I know not where," Loki insisted, sincerity in every chime of his voice and every slight crease in his face. Nowhere in his scent that Harry could tell, but every where else. Then again, Loki was god of lies as well as mischief.

"You listen well, brother," the probably-Thor said, levelling his hammer at Loki's face.

Some other force joined in the party just then, removing the probably-Thor in a flash of light and a horizontal trajectory.

Loki blinked and leant forward. "I'm listening," he said, focused on the empty air where the other had been just a moment ago.

Harry couldn't help the laugh that got past his wolf-shaped lips at that moment. That? Yeah, that was just about comic gold. If only it could be done so well as that on a stage. Happily, Harry got up on his four paws and leapt down from his ring-side seat to that he stood beside Loki.

"Hello," the Norse god greeted Harry, getting down on one knee so that he could more easily scratch between the wolf's ears. He liked animals better than people most days. They may not have had much in the way of intellect, but they weren't stupid, as such, and often made for _much_ better company than just about any Asgardian he could care to name. "Were you watching us?" he asked.

Harry took a moment to breathe the scent of this mythical figure before he pulled back from the hand that was scratching in just the right way in just the right place, sat down, and called his magic to the appropriate tattoo (currently hidden by his fur) so that he turned back into himself, sitting, one leg stretched out, one arm supporting his upper body, one leg pulled up and one arm stretched across it. "I was," he answered with a slight smile.

Loki blinked in surprise.

"What_ are _you?" Loki asked as he straightened up again, adding just a little bit confused and _very_ curious to his previous surprise. "For clearly, you are no mere human."

"Wulfric Doors, wizard, pleased to meet you," Harry rattled off absently, lying about his name without even a thought. It _had_ been his name for the past three years after all, so he was used to giving it. Of course, he generally picked a new name when he changed countries. He'd been Willy Evanson in Wales, Jimmy Trotter in Ireland, Romulus Wolfe in Spain, and Orion White in France. "But, ya know, there are _plenty_ of people, _humans_, who can do what I just did. Okay, so not _everybody_ who _can_ actually cares to learn how, but I had a teacher at school who could turn into a cat, while my dad and his mates gave each other nicknames based on what animal they could turn into."

"Wizard?"

"Yep. So, what brings you to Earth again after all these centuries? Are you really going for world domination or is it just a cover for visiting Jörmungandr?" Harry asked.

"Who?" Loki asked, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, and confusion in every line of his entire being.

Genuine confusion at that. Harry may not have still had his wolf nose to be able to smell a lie, but he could _see_ that Loki was trying to think of who Jörmungandr might be, and was having a hard time of it.

Harry sighed. "Strike one for either your memory or Norse mythological canon," he said with a despairing huff as he leant back against the rocks. "I was half-hoping to meet the world serpent myself some day. Maybe have a chat."

"Well at Ragnarok we are all ended and only the Allfather shall remember the life previous," Loki said, his scholarly inclination showing through. "Perhaps it is simply some one or something not yet come to pass in this life time."

"Nah," Harry dismissed casually. "I'm inclined to believe it's a strike for the validity of the Norse canon. I don't think anything ever gives birth to something not of the same species. Unless crazy scientists are involved of course. On the other hand, you could be right too, and what do I know?"

Their slightly academic conversation was interrupted then by the rather loud spectacle of a _very_ big tree being felled, and they turned to watch the probably-Thor fight the figure who had tackled him. It was violent, entertaining, and short-lived. Kinda. It was cut into by a third party that was neither of them at any rate.

"Okay, I recognise Iron Man Tony Stark from the news, and I'm _guessing_ the blonde -" he could see in colour now after all, so it was good to have his guess confirmed, "- is Thor, but I'm not familiar with the new guy," Harry said.

"The man out of time," Loki answered. "If you stay, I'm sure he'll -"

"You want me to put the hammer down?!" Thor's angry yell cut across Loki, then he was charging the guy dressed in blue and, with a leap, brought the hammer down onto the shield the guy carried. There was bright light, a boom, and a _very_ impressive (to say nothing of _destructive_) shock-wave.

It took even Loki and Harry (who had been further away from the centre of that boom) a moment to get back up on their feet.

Or, well, upright in Harry's case, since he'd been sitting down before he was blown over. He just decided to be glad no large rocks had fallen and landed on his head. That would have been awkward to explain.

"Who are you?" Iron Man demanded shortly when he, probably-Thor (it still hadn't been confirmed yet), and the one Loki called 'the man out of time' (which was as bad a moniker as 'boy who lived' or 'you know who' or 'he who must not be named', in Harry's opinion) reached them. The face-plate of his armour was directed at Harry, so he guessed _he_ was the one being asked. "And what are you doing here?"

"Fred Westley," Harry answered, giving the new alias just as easily as he'd given the name he'd used in Germany to Loki. "And I was camping just up there -" Harry said, pointing to the ridge where he'd bunked down as a wolf, "- when two people fell from the sky and decided to argue about something rather than go _splat_, like _normal_ people who fall from great heights without a parachute generally are inclined to do."

"Guess you'd better come with us Mr Westley," said the man wearing blue, with red-and-white vertical stripes around his middle and a shield on his arm. "The Director will want to talk to you about the things _you're_ not going to be allowed to talk about."

Harry shrugged, not minding. It looked like his luck for trouble finding him had finally caught up. It only took nearly two decades.


	2. Chapter 2

While Loki was being escorted to a cell by a large squad of armed men in matching uniforms, Harry was being quietly and politely interrogated by one Agent Natasha Romanoff. She'd started on the jet when he'd been brought aboard with Loki – though without the same restraints as the Norse deity – and was done in time for him to be seated next to her at a table, properly (if shortly) introduced to everyone else around it of importance, and watching as a dark-skinned man with one eye (Director Fury, apparently) explained to Loki his new situation.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" commented one Dr Bruce Banner, a smile on his face as he pushed his wire-framed glasses a little further up his nose before tucking his arm back into being tightly folded across his chest with the other.

Harry had noticed the way Natasha had looked up from where she was watching Loki on the screen to Dr Banner when the Asgardian had been talking about who the cage he currently inhabited was _actually_ intended for ("a mindless beast, makes play he's still a man"). He wasn't going to ask though. Whatever they were talking about, it couldn't be worse than anything he'd faced in his school years. Mountain troll, basilisk, or dragon. Besides, Dr Banner was _highly_ intelligent, from what Harry could tell, so he doubted that – whatever it was – the man ever became a truly _mindless_ beast.

"Loki's gonna drag this out," said the man who wore the red-white-and-blue suit with the star on his chest – Steve Rogers, Captain America, he'd been introduced as. "So, Thor, what's his play?"

It had been nice getting that confirmed too, actually.

"He has an army called the Chitauri," Thor answered lowly, having not moved except to twitch his fingers a tiny bit, standing still as a statue and not looking at a single one of them, but he finally dropped the pensive pose to turn to them as he spoke. "They're not of Asgard, nor any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

"An army," Steve said, clearly deeply unimpressed. "From outer space." Clearly also wanting the alien bit to be some kind of hoax.

"So, he's building another portal," Dr Banner said, taking his glasses off his face again. Man couldn't seem to decide if he wanted them on or off. He clearly didn't _need_ them too badly. Not like Harry, who'd long-since charmed his glasses to never break, fall off, or be able to be removed by anyone but him. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" Thor asked, worry creasing his brow.

"He's an astrophysicist," Dr Banner explained, mistaking the concern for confusion.

"He's a friend," Thor countered.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Natasha explained, sympathy in her eyes. "Along with one of ours," she added, visibly closing off.

Harry blinked at that. Spell? A spell that would get a man to help him even if it wasn't what he'd normally do? Oh bad. That sounded like the Imperious curse. And he'd take a guess that Natasha was close to the 'one of ours' that she wasn't naming, from the way she'd closed off.

"I want to know why Loki let us take him," Steve said, changing the subject. "He's not leading an army from here."

Harry raised a discrete eyebrow. The man could _not_ be that stupid, could he? The men who lead armies were _rarely_ on the battlefield themselves these days. No, these days the politicians made decisions that got passed to generals in their offices, which got turned into orders and sent to colonels in _their_ offices, who turned those orders into a workable plan before it was forwarded to the majors who distributed the orders to their captains who then quietly informed the sergeants of the orders who then shouted those orders at the privates who finally acted them out.

If Loki had already given orders, and the way he'd been smiling indicated that he could well have, then the army didn't really _need_ him present. Loki letting himself be captured...

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki," Dr Banner said, gesturing at the glass table where the display of said Asgardian had been showing just moments ago. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can _smell_ crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak," Thor reprimanded. "Loki may be beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha informed the big blonde flatly, rolling her eyes over the table before even looking at him when she'd finished.

"He's adopted," Thor deferred quietly.

"I think it's about the mechanics," Dr Banner said, not letting any awkward silence time to settle over them. "Iridium. What do they need the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilising agent," answered a voice from the hallway just behind Harry and Natasha.

It had taken him some time, but he'd been able to sit with his back open like that again after a few years, and as he turned to see who had spoken – along with everybody else – Harry saw the man who wore the suit, Tony Stark, join them.

"It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D. No hard feelings, Point Break," he said, to Thor, tapping the larger male on the arm in an absent, almost friendly sort of way as he walked past him. "You've got a mean swing. _Also_, it means that the portal can be opened as _wide_, and stay open as _long_, as Loki wants," he announced as he moved to stand in a rather central part of the bridge just in front of the table they were all hanging about. "Uh, raise the mizzenmast. Jip the topsails," he called politely to the nearby people working the computers, proving that he was either a few sandwiches short of a picnic, or in possession of a _unique_ sense of humour. "That man is playing Galaga!" he called out, pointing to one of the people across the room, and thereby causing several people (Captain America included) to look around them to spot this person. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." Then he noticed something else, and put a hand over one eye a couple of times. "How does Fury even see these?" he asked, gesturing to the touch screens.

"He turns," answered a pretty young woman Harry had been introduced to as being 'Agent Hill'.

"Sounds exhausting," Stark declared absently before he started fiddling with the many various things that couldn't clearly be seen clearly from anywhere _but_ right in front of them. Stark currently being the only person in that position. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on _pretty_ easily," he continued.

Harry guessed Agent Barton was the 'one of ours' Natasha hadn't named a moment before from the way she blinked rapidly when that name was said.

"The only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density. Something to... kick-start the Cube," Stark finished, finally turning to face all of them.

Harry, having gone to school with twin pranksters, having a prankster for a godfather, and very aware of the prankster legacy he would have been carrying on if he'd been raised by his parents, noticed the way Stark's fingers trailed over the edge of those computers he'd been fiddling with. He didn't know what the man was up to, but if he could get him alone later, he'd ask so that he could laugh with rather than end up being laughed at.

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Agent Hill asked from where she was standing watch over them all. Her question was serious and more than a little cynical.

"Last night," Stark answered, his tone flippant but his answer just as serious. "The package, Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" he asked, arms out in supplication to them all, disbelief clear to see.

Oh yes, here was a man who didn't understand why other people weren't as fast as he was.

"Does Loki need any particular _kind_ of power source?" Steve asked.

Oh, Harry could see it now. It was going to be like getting Malfoy to work with Ron – except those two had been of essentially the same view while on opposing sides. Here before him were two on the same side but with differing views.

"He'd need to heat the Cube to 120-million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Dr Banner said, pacing back and forth behind the table.

Stark made a gesture of general gratitude to the room – or else, it was a gesture of 'see, he gets it, why don't you?' – before he moved to answer. Literally, moving towards Dr Banner as he spoke. "Unless, Selvig was able to stabilise the quantum tunnelling effect."

"Well, if he could do that, then he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet," Dr Banner announced softly.

"Finally, someone who speaks English," Stark said appreciatively.

Yep, definitely someone who didn't get why other people weren't fast enough to understand what he was saying.

"Oh is that what just happened?" Steve asked softly.

"Take out the words you didn't understand," Harry advised. "Heat the Cube, stabilise the tunnel, anywhere on the planet."

"Oh," the man said softly.

"It's good to meet you, Dr Banner," Stark said, taking the man's hand and shaking it. "Your work, on antielectron collisions is unparalleled," he complimented. "And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage-monster."

Dr Banner clearly wasn't so fond of the second compliment as he as the first as he took a moment to think of how to react to that, ultimately giving a slightly stilted "Thanks," while turning away from the other genius and gauging reactions to that news – particularly Harry's reaction, since he hadn't known – and also looking for someone to rescue him from the conversation he suddenly didn't want to be involved in any more.

Harry, for his part, figured that a man turning into 'an enormous green rage-monster' sounded like the man turned into a troll when he got angry. Trolls he could handle. Not hard. No problem. He wouldn't be tip-toe-ing around the guy just because of that.

"Dr Banner is only here to track the Cube," Fury announced, reprimand in his voice, as he entered the room. Took a while for him to get there from Loki's cell. "I was hoping you might join him."

"I would start with that stick of his," Steve suggested, looking from Fury to the two scientists who stood a bit behind his chair and to the right. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"Magical?" Harry piped up, curious.

"I don't know about that," Fury said with a frown. "But it is powered by the Cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor asked, a confused look taking over his whole face. "I do not understand."

"I do!" Steve said suddenly, a smile on his face. "I understood that reference."

"A monkey, Thor Odinson," Harry said, and then transformed in his chair. His body shrank, clothes melted into his skin – which sprouted fur – a tail grew out of his rear and his glasses became little more than lines on his face. Then, Harry hopped out of his chair beside Natasha and onto the table.

"Common squirrel monkey," Dr Banner noted, stunned. "Mr Westley, how did you do that?"

Harry the common squirrel monkey grinned, showing all his little pointy teeth, and did a back-flip (best thing about monkey bodies was the tricks they could do), and landed as -

"Golden lion tamarin," Stark said, also staring.

Harry nodded and sat down, tail stretching up, then further up as he changed again.

"Ring tailed lemur," Dr Banner named. "But that's a lemur, not a monkey."

Harry-lemur nodded and launched himself at Director Fury, transforming as he did so that he landed on the man's shoulder in the form of a white-faced capuchin monkey, from whence he gave Stark a salute.

The man laughed and put on a pirate voice to say: "We called the _monkey_ 'Jack'!"

Harry applauded and jumped from Fury to Natasha then back into his seat beside her, where he turned back into himself again.

"How the _hell_ did you do that?" Fury demanded.

Harry blinked innocently. "Do what?" he asked.

"How did you turn into all those monkeys?" Fury reiterated.

"And lemur," Stark added, always one to be technical, especially if it annoyed Fury.

"It should be impossible," Banner agreed.

"Then, if it was impossible, how could I have possibly done anything of the kind?" Harry asked, very sweetly he thought. "No, surely I can't have done anything impossible. Impossible things can't be done, that's why they're impossible, you see?"

"But you just did it!" Fury snapped.

"Did what?" Harry asked.

"Turned into a whole lot of monkeys!" the one-eyed man nearly yelled.

"And a lemur," Stark persisted.

"But that's impossible," Harry countered politely, still blinking in false innocence. "You said so yourself."

"Which is why I want to know how you did it!" Fury stated, his voice raising with every other word.

"I can't do impossible things Director Fury," Harry said kindly. "Maybe you're under too much stress. When was the last time you slept?" he asked, all concern.

It was possible to see the veins on Fury's bald head pulse as they stood out under his skin.

Thor laughed. "You remind me of Loki when we were children!" he announced happily. "I was not aware that any mortals had the ability for magic."

"Most of the people who claim the title 'magician' just do card tricks, illusions, smoke and mirrors and clever stage deceptions," Harry waved off absently. Then he smiled. "But, back to _your_ point, Director. Do you have any recorded footage of Loki doing... whatever it was he did?"

"No," Fury answered through gritted teeth, very dissatisfied over not getting an answer.

"Is there anyone here who actually saw it?" Harry pressed.

"I did," Fury answered, and it was almost like pulling teeth the way he said it, like he didn't like to give up any intelligence even if it would help him to do so.

"Excellent!" Harry cheered, a smile on his face as he bounced out of his seat over to the man – a slightly disconcerting thing for a man of thirty-some to be doing – and took hold of the sides of Fury's face, fixing his gaze on the man's single eye before he whispered: "Legillimens," and dived in after the memories of the event in question.

A few seconds later he'd found them, cancelled the spell, and stepped back from the man.

"Thor, what colour are Loki's eyes in your memories?" Harry asked.

"Green," was the answer. "As green as your own, Mr Westley. Why?"

"Because right now they are the exact same _blue_ as Agent Barton's and Erik Selvig's and anyone else he's caught with that spell," Harry announced gravely.

"Loki is not responsible!?" Thor cried, clearly suddenly a lot more hopeful. Here was a man who loved his brother indeed.

"Well, I'd say that he's not _entirely_ in charge of his actions, let's put it that way," Harry said as delicately as he could, turning to head towards Dr Banner and Mr Stark. He wanted a look at that sceptre, and they were the ones who would be playing with it to find the Tesseract, whatever that was. "But the orders he's getting will be filtered through his own psyche before they get carried out."

"Which leaves the question of who _is_ in charge, and how the _hell_ did you get into _my_ head!?" Fury demanded.

"No one just _hands over_ an _army_, so probably the ruler of the Chitauri," Harry said, waving the man off as he linked one arm with each Banner and Stark. "So," he said with a smile, "which way to the play room?" he asked.

Banner and Stark both laughed, and the latter gestured for the former to lead the way, though they were all linked together by Harry.

"Westley!" Fury yelled after them.

He was ignored.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm not going to touch anything," Harry declared as they stepped into the lab. "I'm a dedicated student, and I learn fast, but I haven't directed my attention to science at all... yet," he said.

"Then why...?" Stark started, "and for that matter, _how_...?"

Harry smiled. "Thor isn't completely stupid just because he's a physical guy from a different world and doesn't understand our culture," he said.

"Magic?" Banner asked, sceptically. "Really?"

"Really," Harry agreed, and pulled his wand out of his sleeve to start running his own diagnostics over the sceptre while the other two set up their equipment. "And the only reason I can tell you that and not be worried about breeching the Statute of Secrecy is because you _personally know Thor and Loki_. Knowing about magic in some way before having a random witch or wizard tell you is about the only loophole for getting out of having your memories wiped of the knowledge, though you can bet your bootstraps the bureaucrats won't be pleased when they find out. Yes, they _can_ make you forget," Harry assured them as he finished his first battery of basic diagnostic spells and let Dr Banner wave his much more technologically advanced 'wand' over the sceptre.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract," Bruce declared as he held one bit of equipment over the glowing part of the weapon and focused on some computer screens. "But it's gonna take _weeks_ to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct rout to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around... six-hundred teraflops," Stark countered as he fiddled with a different computer.

"Heh. All I packed was a toothbrush," Banner said with a smile on his face and amusement in his voice.

Stark and Harry both chuckled softly and briefly in appreciation of the joke.

"You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime," Stark said as he crossed the room towards Banner. "Top ten floors: all R&D. You'd love it. It's Candy Land. You too, Westley."

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York, I kind of... _broke_... Harlem," Banner countered sheepishly.

"Well, I promise a stress-free environment," Stark declared pleasantly, a pointy object in one of the hands he was holding up in a friendly way. "No tension, no surprises," he said, just before he poke-zapped Banner with said pointy object.

"Ow!" Banner man-yelped, hand going to the spot but a smile was on his face despite that.

Stark leant in, silently intent, looking for reaction of any kind.

"Hey!" a voice yelled from the other end of the lab. It was Steve.

"Nothing?" Stark queried politely.

"Are you nuts?" Steve demanded as he very nearly marched up to them, a disapproving frown on his face.

Quite the contrast from the smile that was still on Banner's, though it was slowly melting off his face now.

"Jury's out," Stark answered the super-soldier absently before he gave Banner his full attention again. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?" he asked, miming playing bongo drums as he listed them.

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked, that disapproval still written all over his face.

"Funny things are," Stark answered shortly, pointing at the soldier with the implement he'd used to poke-zap Banner.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't _funny_," he countered firmly. "No offence, Doc."

"Come on Captain, show a little trust," Harry admonished. "Dr Banner wouldn't have agreed to come at all if he couldn't handle it."

"Thank you, Mr Westly," Banner said, blinking in surprise, his smile coming back just a little bit at that second vote of confidence. With Stark not being the least bit worried and this guy who could turn into monkeys at will happily declaring similar confidence... it was a nice feeling. "And, no, I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle... pointy things."

"You're tip-toe-ing big man," Stark said, waving said pointy thing at Banner as he headed for the cupboard of dried food provided to them, setting down his pointy thing as he went. "You need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr Stark," the Captain stated firmly, still wearing that disapproving line around his mouth and between his eyebrows.

"You think I'm not?" Stark countered as he opened the silver bag of blueberries. "Why did Fury call us in? Why _now_? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?" he asked. "I can't solve an equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?" the blonde asked.

"He's a spy," Stark answered. "Captain, he's _the_ spy. His _secrets_ have secrets."

"I can vouch for _that_," Harry quipped while Stark fed himself a handful of dried fruit. Harry slipped his old Ollivander wand out of his sleeve and into his hand and conjured an old-fashioned chalk-board. He liked them more than computers for some things. A piece of chalk then appeared in the air and wrote across the top of the board "Problems With This Situation" and started making a list, beginning with the points Stark had already raised. "With only five seconds in the guy's head looking at his memories, I _can_ vouch that Fury's secrets really _do_ have secrets of their own."

"It's bugging all three of us," Stark declared with a nod to Harry. "Isn't it?" he added in Banner's direction.

"Ah... Um..." Banner stuttered, deliberately not looking up. "I just want to finish my work here..." he said, waving his hands around to indicate said work.

"Doctor?" Steve asked, looking to a man he had read the file on – and felt he could rely on to make reasonable points... as long as he wasn't being a massive green rage-monster.

Banner sighed, looked around at them, and pulled off his glasses. "'A warm light for all mankind,'" he said, quoting Loki. "Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube."

"I heard it," Steve agreed.

"Well, I think that was meant for _you_," the doctor said, looking and pointing his glasses at Stark, who offered the man the bag of dried fruit.

He'd missed the interview, so he'd not heard that, so this was his way of congratulating the man on seeing something he'd missed.

"Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the Tower, it was still all over the news," Banner said as he dug out some of the offered fruit.

"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly -"

Stark turned and gave Steve a pointed look.

"- building in New York?"

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source," Banner explained. "That building will run itself for, what? A year?"

"It's just a prototype," Stark answered easily as he waved his hands over each other to indicate approximation. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now," he added in Steve's direction. "That's what he's getting at."

"So... Why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring _him_ in on the Tesseract project?" Banner asked Steve pointedly. "What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"Oh, that's easy: they're not," Harry answered as his bit of chalk listed Banner's questions.

All three gave him their full attention at that.

"Well, I had to look around a bit to find the memory of Loki doing whatever he did," Harry defended with a smile. "While evacuating the lab where the Cube as being researched, there was an order to get out 'phase two', which is linked to the Tesseract project. Now, Fury didn't dwell on what 'phase two' was, but there was a distinct impression of needing to not lose any of the progress they'd made in anti-alien weaponry."

The words "Weapons made from the Tesseract(?)" were written up on the chalk-board behind Harry.

"Of course, you don't have to take _my_ word for it," Harry assured them. "It wasn't even a solid thought in his head."

"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Banner asked delicately.

"We still have orders, and should follow them," Steve countered.

"Following's not really my style," Stark countered easily, shoving more blueberries in his mouth as he rounded the table.

"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Steve sneered slightly.

"Of the people in this room, which one is A: wearing a spangly outfit, and B: not of use?" Stark countered.

"Even I've been useful in here Cap," Harry put in. "Got my initial readings of the thing done while they set up their equipment."

"You never did share those," Stark quipped lightly, turning from Captain America to Harry, curiosity replacing the animosity as he performed that physical one-eighty as well as the mental motion.

"Yes, well, knowing how to... _turn it off_ doesn't help much when you're using it to help you track the Tesseract," Harry answered simply, hesitating only over the wording he chose. They probably wouldn't have appreciated him using the word 'kill' instead after all.

Seeing that they were getting back to work, Steve sighed, grateful and frustrated, and took his leave – only to stop just outside the door and turn to go _down_ the hall when he was previously going to head _up_ it.

"_That's_ the guy my dad never shut up about?" Stark questioned as the door closed and he returned his attention to his programming. "I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."

"But then someone else would have thawed him out," Harry quipped as he vanished the chalk-board. "And he could have reacted _very_ badly to that. He's having trouble coping with just seventy years of change."

"Guy's not wrong about the situation though," Banner added in. "Well, not completely. Whoever's pulling the strings _does_ have the jump on us, whether it's Loki or someone else."

"What they've got is an Acme Dynamite Kit. It's gonna blow up in his face. _And_ I'm gonna be there when it does," Stark countered.

"I'll read all about it," Banner promised with a smile.

Stark hummed. "_Or_," he suggested, "you'll be suiting up with the rest of us."

Banner gave a quiet, amused, derisive snort as he continued to tap at the screens. "Now, you see, I don't get a suit of armour. I'm exposed. Like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart," Stark said from behind his own screen.

"Certainly shut up the people who claimed you didn't have one," Harry quipped as he decided to run a few more diagnostic spells over the sceptre. "Do my spells make a difference to your readings?" he asked.

"Yes, so stop," Stark ordered absently before returning to his previous point. "This," he said, tapping his chest, and stepping away from his computer screen, "stops it. This little circle of light, it's part of me now, not just armour." He came to a halt on the other side of Banner's translucent touch-screen. "It's a... terrible privilege."

"But _you_ can control it," Banner pointed out.

"Because I learned how," Stark countered.

"It's different," Banner insisted, shaking his head and getting back to tapping the screen.

Tony cleared everything to one side so that nothing was between them apart from the blank screen itself – no data, no readings, just blank screen and a clear view of the other person. "Hey. I read about your accident. That much gamma exposure... _should_ have killed you."

"So, what, the Hulk... the _other guy_... saved my life?" Banner asked. "That's nice. That's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

"I guess we'll find out," Stark said, and displayed tact enough to go back to his own station.

"You might not enjoy that," Banner informed him.

"You just might," Stark answered.

"I smell man-crush," Harry quipped. "Less flirting or I'll turn one of you into a tropical parrot and hand you off to Fury to perch on his shoulder and squawk about pieces of eight."


	4. Chapter 4

"Loki is interacting with someone," Harry declared abruptly from his place beside the sceptre. He'd returned to it the moment Stark had allowed that his magical doings would no longer interfere with their search programme. It was near dawn, and apart from short naps when they really couldn't keep going, they'd been at it all night.

"How do you know that?" Banner asked, curious.

"The sceptre," Harry answered simply before turning to Stark. "Can you pull up the video feed?"

"Sure. I've had J.A.R.V.I.S. in the system since I hit the bridge," Stark replied, and proceeded to pull that feed up on one of the translucent screens. The programme was complete and running, it was just a matter of waiting now, and while he'd intended to go through what dirty little secrets Fury was hiding from them, this could be interesting as well, and he was good at multitasking anyway.

The camera that was watching Loki wasn't expanded enough to capture whoever was speaking with him, but the microphone was good enough to oblige.

"Love is for children. I owe him a debt," came the voice of Agent Romanoff from off screen.

"Tell me," Loki instructed politely as he backed away from where Agent Romanoff must have been standing, his eyes on her as he meandered back to the only thing even vaguely resembling a bed in that giant fish-bowl, only turning when he was nearly there so that he could sit down properly.

And then they were _both_ out of view of the camera.

"Before I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D... I... uh... Well, I made a name for myself. I have a very _specific_ skill set."

"It includes masquerading as secretaries to rich men," Stark quipped.

"I didn't care who I was used for, or on," she admitted softly. "I got on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call."

"And what will you do if I vow to spare him?" Loki asked.

"Not let you out," Romanoff answered.

"No, but I _like_ this," Loki declared, and they could _hear_ the smile even if he was still just off screen and out of view from the spectators in the lab several floors above. "Your world in the balance, and you bargain for _one man_."

"Mr Westley indicated that maybe _you_ were just as much on a string for someone else as you've got Agent Barton on yours," Romanoff said. "Apart from that, regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that. I'm Russian. Or I was."

"She has a point about regimes," Banner commented lowly.

"And what are you now?" Loki asked.

"It's really not that complicated. I got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out," Romanoff said firmly, not answering him.

"Can you?" Loki asked softly. "Can you wipe out _that much_ red? Dreykov's daughter, São Paulo, the hospital fire? Barton told me everything," he said, and then he was up, walking across his cage towards where Romanoff was conversing with him from the other side of the glass. "Your ledger is dripping. It's _gushing_ red and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? On the word of Mr _Westley_?" Loki asked, dangerously as he stalked up to the glass. "I find it interesting that you trust _him_ and _his_ word so easily. He introduced himself to _me_ as Wulfric Doors before your heroes arrived to escort me back onto your little jet. This is the basest sentimentality. This is a _child_ at _prayer_. _Pathetic_!" he spat, and he was out of view once more, but on the other side, close to Agent Romanoff.

"You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that _makes up_ for the horrors. But they are part of you – and they will _never_ go away," he informed her lowly, and then there was a great _bang_, like he'd struck his fist into the glass and it echoed. "I won't touch Barton," he promised viciously, "not until I make him kill you. Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear. And then he'll awake _just_ long enough to see his _good work_ and when he screams I'll _split his skull_. This is my bargain, you mewling _quim_," he spat at her.

"You're a monster," Natasha's voice was quiet and quailing.

They could just hear Loki's low laugh. "Oh, no," he answered. "_You_ brought the _monster_."

"So, Banner?" Agent Romanoff said, simply, no longer afraid, no longer quivering, no longer on the point of tears. Quite the little actress, even if they were only going by her voice. "That's your play?"

"What?" Loki asked.

And then it was the business-like tones of Agent Romanoff speaking into a comm-unit, relaying information to a superior officer or a handler or just someone who relayed the important stuff to people who needed to know what she'd found out. "Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab. I'm on my way. Send Thor as well."

She must have been moving as she spoke since Loki moved and turned, likely tracking her.

There was a slight pause in Agent Romanoff's one-sided conversation, then: "Thank you, for your co-operation."

"Turn it off," Banner requested quietly, seeing no point in watching further.

Before Stark managed to do that though, Harry saw Loki smile. A smile like the Twins had smiled when they'd just had something work out nearly perfectly despite it not going _exactly_ according to plan.

"Are we near anything that will cause problems if it blows?" Harry asked as the screen went dark.  
"You're not losing faith in me, are you Mr Westley?" Banner asked. "If, indeed, that _is_ your name. Just, a little unnerved since Loki pointed that out."

"I haven't gone by my own name in nearly two decades, Dr Banner," Harry answered. "It's nothing personal, my name or your other question. No, I just know a few practical jokers, and I recognise that smile Loki flashed just before Stark cut the feed. The damn sceptre is giving off a feeling of being _pleased_ as well, and that isn't a _good thing_ in an object that isn't supposed to be _sentient_ in the _first place_. Trust me, I have experience with that."

"Tell us your real name and I'll trust you," Stark promised.

"I haven't given _anybody_ my real name for nearly two decades, Mr Stark," Harry answered quietly, evenly. "I haven't gone by the name my parents gave me for one simple reason: I was made a martyr at seventeen. That name was expected to be a saviour to all the people who knew it. Can I still be trusted even if I _don't_ tell you my name?"

The genius scientists both nodded in mute acceptance. Martyr at seventeen was a good reason to not speak up on that. Then something beeped.

"Ooh, I found the secret files about the Tesseract," Stark announced happily and brought them up onto the screen they'd been watching Loki and Natasha's conversation on before.

The files had been up for just a few seconds, all three of them lined up and reading the information at their own pace off the screen, when the door opened and Fury walked in, his long black leather coat billowing a bit behind him.

"What are you doing Mr Stark?" he demanded, almost delicately ignoring the other two men in the room. Likely, he was just most _used_ to being upset with whatever Stark was doing that the other two didn't even factor in.

"Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about _you_," Stark countered.

"You're _supposed_ to be locating the Tesseract," Fury pointed out, peeved.

"Ah, you think we're not making progress?" Harry guessed.

Fury's mouth became a thin line, indicating Harry had hit the nail right on the head.

"We're made. The model's locked and we're sweeping for a signature now," Bruce explained casually as he leant against the window ledge. "We get a hit," he said, pointing past Director Fury to a different computer (Fury turned, even though he'd only see the back of the computer running the programme), "we'll have the location within half a mile."

"Yeah, then you get your Cube back. No muss, no fuss," Stark quipped, a smirk on his face before he was distracted by the screen before him. "What _is_ 'phase two'?" he asked, seeing it on the screen before him.

"Phase two is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the Cube to make weapons," Steve announced, his tone deeply unhappy, as he slammed down one ridiculously big gun on one of the lab's metal tables.

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract," Fury said, one hand up in a placating gesture as he turned to face the super-soldier. "This does _not_ mean -" he said, laying that hand down on the weapon in question, "-that _we're_ making -"

"I'm sorry Nick," Stark interrupted, turning the screen around to face them as he stepped out from behind the table the sceptre was resting on. "What were you lying?" he asked as he showed off the schematics for weapons based on the Tesseract.

"I was wrong, Director," Steve said, thumbs tucked into the belt at his waist and that disapproving frown on his face again. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

Thor and Natasha arrived in time to hear that sentence, or Thor did at least, if the wary look he cast around the entire room – and not just at Banner – was any indication.

"Do you know about this?" Banner asked Natasha, gesturing from her to the screen where those blueprints Stark had found were being displayed.

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" Agent Romanoff suggested, ignoring the question totally.

"I was in Calcutta," Banner replied. "I was pretty well removed."

"Loki is manipulating you," the red-head said, slowly walking towards him.

"And you've been doing... _what_, exactly?" Banner countered.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you," the agent pressed.

"Oh yes, we watched your interview," Harry answered her, a trace of sarcasm in his tone. "Well, I say 'watched', but you were off screen for so much of it, so it was more like we listened in."

"And I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy," Banner added firmly, now himself moving to stand by the screen Stark had those weapons plans laid out so clearly on, even taking hold of a corner of it. "I'd like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build _weapons of mass destruction_," he said, again using his glasses in his hand to help him emphasise the point.

For a moment, there was a slightly pregnant pause as _everyone_ waited for the answer to that question.

"Because of _him_," Fury answered at last, raising one arm to point the finger at Thor.

"Me?" Thor asked, shocked and confused.

"Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge mat that levelled a small town," Fury explained. "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, _hilariously_, out-gunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor objected. "Loki's fury was against me the last time I was here, and this time Mr Westley believes another to control him, for I know my brother. He may be a trickster, but wanton destruction is _not_ his inclination."

"That's just it though. You're not the only ones out there, are you?" Fury stated. "And you're not the only threat. The world is filling up with people who can't be matched, that can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the Cube?" Steve asked pointedly.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew attention to it. It is what drew Loki's manipulators. It is a signal to all the realms that Earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor explained angrily.

"A higher form?" Fury questioned. "You forced our hand. We had to come up with _something_."

"A nuclear deterrent," Stark quipped lowly, his eyes fixed on the weapon Steve had brought in, his whole posture tense. He was _really_ through with large-scale weapons manufacture. Just about couldn't stand to look at any weapon larger than a firework these days. Certainly anything he put on his suit had to be small, just in order to be carried. "Because that always calms everything _right_ down," he added sarcastically.

"Remind me again _how_ you made your fortune, Stark," Fury countered.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be _neck-deep_ -" Steve said, an unattractive expression on his otherwise handsome face.

"Hold on," Stark interrupted. "How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Fury returned.

"I thought you humans were more _evolved_ than this," Thor said with a slight sneer on his face, his disdain still completely aimed at Director Fury. "You show such distrust towards your champions."

Harry whipped his wand out of his sleeve and turned Fury and Rogers into chimpanzees. "There," he said. "Now they're _less_ evolved. And Stark?" he added to the man even as he cast a silencing charm over him. "The only reason you aren't smaller and furry as well is because I don't know how your arc reactor would handle it."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. monitors potential threats," Natasha explained to Thor gently.

"I don't see Captain America as a potential threat," Banner quipped as he tried not to laugh at the two chimps that were staring up at them all, confused on the cold metal floor. "Especially not now."

"Well, we're _all_ on the threat watch-list," Natasha answered with a sigh, carefully avoiding looking at the monkeys so that she wouldn't be tempted to laugh at her boss. "Even a good number of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own agents."

"He speaks of control, yet courts chaos," Thor complained, then his brow furrowed. "Which one is Director Fury?" he asked.

"The one that _still_ has only one eye," Harry answered, a little amused.

"That's his M.O. really," Banner said. "We're not a team after all. We're a chemical mixture that _makes_ chaos. We're a ... a _time bomb_. Right now we can thank Mr Westley for diffusing the situation..."

"But we don't really know who Mr Westley is," Natasha said lowly. "You gave us and Loki a different name."

"Wulfric Doors, yeah," Harry admitted with a shrug. "I gave Loki the name I'd been going by while I was in in Germany, and you the name I intend to go by for the foreseeable future. Now," he said, looking down at the smaller primates. "If I turn you back, will you behave yourselves?" he asked. "Or will I have to put silencing spells on you like I did Stark?"

The one-eyed chimp set its knuckles on the ground, and glared as well as it could with only one eye. The other just nodded.

Harry eye-balled Stark, who drew an 'X' over his arc reactor and mimed zipping his mouth shut.

"That's two promises to behave and an implied threat," Harry said happily, as he lifted the spell on Stark and reversed the transfiguration on Rogers. Harry took a moment to consider Fury-the-chimp before he turned him back as well. With bananas now embossed on the bottom edge of his leather coat. "Now, you may or may not be interested to know that the sceptre is upset with me for stopping the yelling with my little magic trick, but similarly _very_ excited to know that a slave to its magic and a lot of hired guns are approaching, fast, and with intent."

"Can you tell who?" Natasha asked, her eyes wide.

Harry arched a brow. "The sceptre doesn't care for the names of those it enslaves. It doesn't even know _Loki's_ name, it certainly doesn't know who Barton or Selvig are," he informed her. "As far as the sceptre it concerned, they are simply all 'the subjugated'. It was having a truly high time with Loki while you were having your little chat. It got all keen and chirpy."

"Are you telling me that the sceptre is _sentient_?" Fury asked, incredulous.

Harry blinked. "I suppose you're going to object to the impossibility of an inanimate object having thought-process capabilities," he said, and shook his head.

"It doesn't have any A.I. wiring, and I don't see where it could possibly be keeping a brain if it were living," Fury objected.

"That's hardly a limitation!" Harry snapped back, green eyes blazing. He took a deep breath and turned to look over his shoulder and glare at the sceptre. "Stop that," he ordered it.

The blue glowing part of the sceptre pulsed a little brighter in answer at the same time as the computer running the search programme got a hit. Banner moved quickly to see the result.

"You've located the Tesseract?" Natasha asked, following him.

"I can get there fastest," Tony offered.

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard," Thor asserted. "No human is a match for it."

"You're not going alone," Steve ordered Tony, grabbing his arm before he could leave the room.

"You're going to stop me?" Stark demanded back, slapping the hand that had grabbed him down and away.

"Put on the suit, let's find out," Steve suggested.

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man," Stark said lowly, and they were in each others faces again.

"Put on the suit," Steve ordered.

"He was going to before you stopped him," Harry pointed out, keeping his voice deliberately measured and calm.

"Oh my god," Dr Banner said softly, and looked up from his screen to Stark.

"Dr Banner?" Harry asked, wondering what had caused the man to say _that_.

Suddenly there was an explosion, one which sent all of them to the ground and a couple of people through it, and Harry cursed himself for forgetting, even for a moment, that the sceptre had been happy about its approaching mind-slaves.

"Put on the suit," came Steve's breathless order from near the door – near the floor near the door.

"Yeah," agreed Stark, with a grunt as he hauled himself up off the ground.

The sound of their footsteps retreated down the hall as alarms sounded. Fury called for Agent Hill on his ear piece, wanting a report.

"_External detonation_," her voice reported in a tinny voice through the comm-unit. "_Number three engine is down._ _Someone's got to get outside and patch that engine_."

"Stark, you copy that?" Fury asked, still dizzy from the explosion from the way he was holding his head – quite apart from using his comm piece – and leaning on the destroyed table that the sceptre had been on.

"_I'm on it_," Stark's digitised voice answered.

"Coulson, initiate defensive lock-down in the detention section then get to the armoury. Romanoff?" he asked, finally on his feet and marching out of the destroyed lab towards the bridge.

Harry didn't follow, only casting a spying charm over Fury's eye-patch as the man left so that he could be kept up on what the whole mess looked like. No one had given him one of those fancy ear-pieces for communicating with the whole ship after all. Thoughtless buggers.

For himself, once his ears had stopped ringing and he was no longer trapped under a fallen computer, Harry followed after where Agent Romanoff and Dr Banner had fallen, wanting to make sure they weren't hurt.

Well, Bruce seemed to be fine, if struggling with that enormous green rage-monster Harry had been hearing about, but Natasha was slightly trapped under some very large fallen detritus.

Harry levitated it up quickly and once she'd pulled herself out from under it he knelt down to check that she wasn't injured.

"Bruised," he declared, "but it would have been worse if you'd had to pull your own leg out past the sharp metal."

Romanoff smiled slightly in gratitude. "Will you be alright here? I want to see if Barton's one of the invaders, see if I can't get him back."

"Go," Harry dismissed with a nod.

She didn't need telling twice.

Harry stepped lightly over the mess until he was near Banner, who was still hunched over and fighting _something_. "Want me to turn you into a rabbit?" he offered absently. "Or just evacuate you to the ground and let you run wild for a bit?"

"Either one but pick fast," Banner answered, his voice deeper, more growling than normal, already turning green.

"Well, we're over America, so let's try the desert," Harry suggested amicably. "Want me to come too or just send you?"

"Send," Banner growled.

Harry nodded and turned Banner's trousers into a portkey that would take him down to an uninhabited bit of countryside. Slapped a tracking charm on the man as well while he was at it. Didn't want to lose his new friend after all. Hell, he still wrote to the friends he'd made in Wales, Ireland, Spain, and France. Probably would write to his friends in Germany too once this mess was over. He may not stick with one name for more than three years, but he kept track of his friends.


	5. Chapter 5

Agent Coulson was dead. Thor had been tricked by Loki into running into the cage and then was dropped thirty-thousand feet straight down in a steel-and-glass trap. His location was unknown, but he had his hammer with him. According to Harry's tracking charm, Banner was headed for New York. He'd initially been moving at great speed, then stalled for a while, before again moving at speed, but following a road now rather than cutting cross-country. Fury was on the bridge with Hill, talking to Stark and Rogers. Harry didn't care about what. He'd hadn't cancelled his spell that let him listen in, but all the same, he was a bit preoccupied with Natasha and Clint in one of the med-bays.

Harry was rather glad it looked _nothing_ like any kind of hospital bay he'd seen, but just a plain bunk with an odd bed and a couple of extra features and items stocked in the cupboards.

"Who's this?" Barton asked when Natasha opened the door to let Harry in.

"Fred Westley," Harry greeted, not extending a hand to shake. The man was, after all, strapped to the bed by his wrists. "Pleased to meet you Agent Barton."

"Clint," Natasha said quietly, taking up her seat near the bed again. "You're gonna be alright."

The man twitched and shook his head and clenched his fists and screwed his eyes shut before he opened them again. "You know that?" he asked, his tone a bit derisive as he wheezed out a slight laugh. "Is that what _you_ know?"

Natasha pushed herself up off the chair again and moved to the small table just behind the bed. It had a jug with water, and glasses, and a little cabinet full of various medications.

"I got no window," Clint said, wheezed, growled with frustration as he tossed his head back against the raised pillow of his bed. "I have to flush him out," he whispered desperately.

"You gotta level out, it's gonna take time," Natasha informed him kindly.

"You don't understand," Barton objected, whole body thrown as back into the raised upper-half of the bed as it could be as he stared at the ceiling and panted. He looked over at Harry. "Have you ever had someone take your brain and play?" he asked, then turned to Natasha before he could see Harry nod. "Pull you out and stuff something else in?" he asked in a terrified whisper. "Do you know what it's like to be unmade?"

Natasha had frozen halfway through the first question. "You know that I do," she answered him.

"For the record, likewise," Harry offered. "Except for the 'unmade' part, since the people doing it to me wanted me to know what they were doing, and wanted me to suffer it from beginning to end, and it only ended when I could push them out."

Clint breathed deeply for a while, sitting up from the raised bed a little. "Why am I back?" he asked, a lost look in his still-too-blue eyes. "How did you get him out?"

"Cognitive recalibration," Natasha answered, and moved to sit down on the edge of Clint's bed, since Harry had taken the chair. "I hit you really hard on the head."

"Thanks," Clint said, winning a rare smile from the red-head as she started unstrapping the restraints around his wrists.

"Unfortunately that won't work for Loki," Harry put in from the other side of the room. "Or he probably wouldn't have been a problem from the moment Thor showed up. Then again, we may just need to hit him harder."

"What?" Clint asked, confused.

"Apparently, Loki's being controlled like you were," Natasha explained gently.

"Damn. Now I feel sympathetic for the bastard," Clint said, thumping his head back. "Natasha... how many agents did I -?"

"Don't," she ordered firmly. "Don't do that to yourself Clint. This is... this is monsters and magic, and nothing we were ever trained for." She paused and looked over at Harry. "Well," she amended, "nothing that _all_ of us were ever trained for."

"Hey," Harry objected, raising his arms in deference. "Just because I fought mountain trolls, basilisks, dragons, mermaids, evil witches and wizards..." he trailed off at their expressions. "Okay, but I wasn't _trained_ for it. It was just my life," he said with a helpless shrug.

"I'm missing something, not just the whole Loki _also_ being a victim bit," Clint noted dryly. "Did he get away?" he asked.

Natasha and Harry both nodded.

"Don't suppose you know where?" Natasha asked, though she wasn't really hopeful.

"No," Clint agreed. "Didn't need to know. Didn't ask."

Natasha got up from the bed and moved to stand by the door.

Clint swung his legs off the bed and reached for the glass of water Natasha had poured. "He's gonna make his play soon though. Today."

"We've gotta stop him," Natasha said firmly, turning sharply, determination in every line of her leather-cat-suit-clad body.

"Yeah? Who's 'we'?" Clint asked.

"I don't know," Natasha admitted, arms helplessly by her sides. "Who ever's left," she suggested, and gave Harry a brief questioning look which he shrugged and nodded slightly in agreeable answer to.

He'd help.

"Well, if I put an arrow through the bad guy's eye-socket... I'd sleep better, I suppose," Clint allowed, then gave a dry, humourless huff as a smile pulled at his mouth.  
"Now you sound like you," Natasha said with a smile of her own as she sat down beside him on the bed again.

"But you don't," Clint countered, and Natasha's slight smile disappeared. "You're a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to... wade into a _war_. What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing... I just..."

"Natasha," Clint whispered comfortingly. They'd been partners and confidants for a long time.

"I've been compromised. I got red in my ledger," she answered at last, her voice solemn, grave even. "I'd like to wipe it out."

"Numbers of wounded and dead are finally in," Harry announced. He'd gone to the door and had a chit-chat with the guard there, giving the pair a bit of privacy. "Only Coulson's dead, and Loki did him. You caused a lot of injuries and system failures, but so far as we know, you haven't killed any S.H.I.E.L.D. agents," Harry stated, bypassing the chair he'd occupied before as he slipped the Elder Wand out of his sleeve. "Now, I want you to relax, keep your eyes focused on mine, and _don't _fight me," he instructed Clint, tilting his head up so that he was looking at him, and not the pretty lady at his side. "Legillimens."

It wasn't the quick little dive he'd taken in Fury's mind, just looking for a memory that had been near the front of his thoughts anyway. This search within Barton's mind to find any traces left behind by the sceptres magic took a full five minutes.

"Clean and free," Harry announced as he released his hold of Barton's chin. "Your eyes will be a little bit bluer than normal for a while, but that will fade. I give it a week or so and you'll be completely back to normal. Thank you for not fighting me. Also, for the record, if the minions would let me anywhere near Coulson within thirty minutes of his passing, I could revive him. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to reach whatever part of this ship they've shifted him to in time _and_ then convince the right people to let me through in time though."

"Thank you Mr Westley," Natasha said, genuinely grateful, if a little more emotional than usual.

"What would have happened if I'd fought?" Clint asked, determinedly distracting himself from thinking about Coulson. Now was _not_ the time to break after all.

"I am as gentle as I can be when I go into another person's mind, Agent Barton," Harry said. "But if they fight me, then it will become painful for _both_ of us. Me first, and then you as I become clumsier about it through the pain. My initial instructor in the delicate art of entering people's minds and keeping others from entering mine was _not_ gentle. He didn't like me and took great pleasure in causing me so much pain when he entered my mind that I _couldn't_ fight him. My second teacher was _much_ better."

Clint nodded in understanding, though he still didn't completely get it. "So, can you explain to me now what your story is? Because I'm fairly sure those things you mentioned don't exist or aren't possible."

"He turned Fury into a chimpanzee," Natasha quipped.

Clint snorted in amusement. "Wish I'd a seen it," he said.

"Have a shower," Harry ordered kindly. "Get cleaned up, shaved, changed, feel like you again. I'll get out some goodies to show you when you come out," he promised.

Clint smiled gratefully, hopped down from the bed, and headed for the attached small bathroom.

"Pull your legs up," Harry advised Natasha as he pulled a chain over his head. One with a pendant that just looked like a slightly thick rectangle made of wood and with a thin strip of black metal all around the outside. "There isn't a lot of room in here."

Confused, but willing to go along, Natasha shifted back on the bed further and watched as Harry enlarged the pendant until it was revealed to be a trunk.

Harry didn't pull out everything to show off. He just dug around a bit to find things he figured he would probably find useful in the upcoming conflict. His broom was brought out – the Firebolt 360, a more recent release from the same company that brought out the broom his godfather had given him. He still had the original Firebolt, but it was precious for sentimental reasons. He'd bought the Firebolt 360 while he was in Germany. Newer, faster, with more features, and a whole lot less sentimental value if it got damaged in the fight to come.

Harry also dug out his dragon-hide armour. He'd had armour made from basilisk hide by the goblins back when he was seventeen, but he'd done some growing since then. He was happy about the growth for himself, but a bit annoyed that his best armour didn't fit any more. He still _had_ the basilisk hide armour, still had a fair quantity of unused hide as well, but getting another set of armour made out of basilisk hide wasn't the way to continue living inconspicuously.

He also dragged out the invisibility cloak. Of course, he'd been living a peaceful and mostly non-magical life for the last nearly-two-decades, so the cloak and the armour, not being things he used a lot, had fallen to the bottom of the trunk. The only reason the broom was so near the top was because it was a much more recent purchase.

"So... what _is_ your real name?" Natasha asked quietly.

"My real name belongs to a boy who was martyred at seventeen," Harry answered simply as he surveyed the contents of his trunk and wondered if there was anything else he should get out. One internal debate later saw him grabbing a bandoleer (bought from an army surplus shop) and several vials (enchanted to be indestructible) of various different potions. Once he felt he was suitably stocked, he shrunk the trunk and looped the chain around his neck again.

~oOo~

Clint had opened the door between them, dressed, and finished shaving while Natasha was grilling Harry on the potions, and was just about to join in the asking when the door to the bunk slid open, revealing Captain America on the other side. He hadn't pulled up his cowl yet, but it was clear he was in soldier mode the moment he said: "Time to go."

"Go where?" Natasha asked.

"I'll tell ya on the way," he promised. "Can you fly one of those jets?"

"I can," Clint spoke up, towelling the last of the foam off his face and hands.

The Captain looked from Clint to Natasha (who nodded once solemnly) and Harry (who echoed the action). "You got a suit?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Barton answered.

"Then suit up," he instructed before he ducked out again.

"Get me one of those communication things, would you?" Harry asked Natasha. "I'll put mine on too," he said, picking up the dragon-hide.

"Sure," she agreed, and headed for the door. "Clint, you'll show Mr Westley to the hangar?"

Clint nodded in answer.

"No need for that," Harry objected politely. "I know the way. You've got to get your own pretty selves geared up. Go on, shoo. I'll meet you there."

The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents shrugged, but allowed it, and left Harry to get changed in the med-bay on his own.

Less than ten minutes later they were walking through the hangar. Captain America with his cowl up and his shield on one arm in the lead. Agent Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton behind him to the right, Agent Natasha 'The Black Widow' Romanoff behind to the left, and Harry Potter, decked out in his dragon-hide armour from head to toe (he was wearing a dragon-hide hood even), bringing up the rear, broomstick tucked into one expanded pocket, invisibility cloak billowing behind him, and the bandoleer of potions across his chest beneath the dragon-hide coat. His outfit may not have been skin-tight like the other three, but it was comfortable and protective.

The Captain picked an open jet and marched right up into it.

"Hey, you aren't authorised to be in here," objected the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was working inside of it.

"Son," the Captain answered firmly, and clearly not going to take any flack "just don't."

Without any fuss, they had themselves a jet. Barton took the flight controls, Romanoff the weapons controls, and Harry strapped himself into one of the chairs in the back while the Captain decided to remain standing for take-off. Harry got to listen to Fury and Hill giving orders on the Bridge while they flew to New York. Interesting stuff, but nothing he felt the need to share. He kind of wished he'd put such a spell on Stark though, since the man had promised to get to New York before they could. Actually, Harry considered apparating himself there, but he'd never been before, and one of the key points for a successful apparition was visualisation, so that was a no-go. They'd probably beat Dr Banner there though, but not by much. Harry _was_ still tracking him. No idea on Thor, but still fairly confident.

~oOo~

"Stark, we're on your three, headed north-east," Natasha said into a comm-unit once they'd reached the island of Manhattan.

"What, did you stop for drive-thru?" the man quipped. "Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you."

"And open the rear hatch," Harry requested, unstrapping himself from his seat and moving towards the back. He'd commandeered Barton's quiver and bow during the flight and spelled them, explaining to the archer and pilot exactly what he was doing as he did it – in this particular case, enchanting them so that when Barton tapped the quiver with his bow, any arrows (or speciality arrow-heads) that were capable of returning would magically reappear in their right slots.

Right now though, he was taking his broomstick out of his pocket and waiting for the hatch to open enough for him to fly through.

"And please remember when giving directions," Harry said as he flew off and the hatch closed behind him, "that I've never been to New York before in my life."

"Copy that," Captain America answered.

Then Harry's voice, magnified a few hundred fold, was echoing out over the island.

"People of Manhattan, by now you should have noted that your city is under attack from an alien threat. Please move off the streets, away from any windows, and move to the relative safety of sub-level floors of the buildings you are in or move to evacuate through the subway. I repeat, please move _off the streets_ and _away from the windows_. These are positions where you are most at risk of life-threatening harm. If you are in a vehicle, please evacuate it and move towards the nearest building with basement levels or subway station. Please also keep your phones with you if you have them. These will be our best resource for finding you in the clean-up if you become trapped. If there are medical supplies near your current location, take them with you when you evacuate. If you are currently in possession of a weapon of _any_ kind, please take the initiative to defend those around you, but do not, I repeat, _do not_ unduly put yourself at risk! If you can do so without risk, then please head for any transport that will take you off the island. Also, I hope you all have insurance against alien invasions, because this is going to get messy."

"You know, I suddenly get the feeling that he's done this before," Clint noted, quietly surprised.

"Or something very like it," Natasha agreed as she fired upon aliens that were chasing Stark. "I was getting that idea too."

Clint pulled them up sharply so that the jet wouldn't crash into the building in front of them. And they circled around, Natasha firing on the Chitauri whenever a few of them got even nearly in line with her guns, until they were up near the top of Stark Tower and with a clear view of Loki and Thor locked in battle.

Loki shoved Thor aside to fire upon the jet, and made a very solid hit, sending them crashing down – thankfully, Clint was a good enough pilot that he managed to get them on the ground without hitting anything much _but_ the ground, and in a fairly clear space at that. Even if it wasn't a fun ride for any of them. They were still able to walk away from the crash, and that was an important detail at this point.

Especially as they were essentially _the_ line of defence against the alien army that was invading Manhattan.


	6. Chapter 6

Up in the air, once Harry had given his announcement he proceeded to play as a sort of bludger-snitch cross and dive through the middle of a squad of flying alien chariots that had been chasing Stark in his Iron Man suit. About half of them left off their original quarry to chase him instead. Unlike the ones chasing Stark though, the ones who'd broken off to chase Harry didn't have a nice, easy mostly-straight flight-path to follow. Harry took them up above the sky-line and had them crashing into each other while he grinned at the adrenaline that trick-flying always brought him. Loops, double-backs, flying towards one chariot with another on his tail and ducking, up, down, or to the side at the last moment – generally not down though, so that he wouldn't be accidentally hit by any falling debris. Good he may have been, but even he didn't have eyes in the back of his head.

He did see the jet going down in front of him though. Nearly gagged from the smoke that thing was giving off when it went past him too.

And then the flying armoured monster came out of the hole in the sky.

"Stark, Westley, are you seeing this?" Steve's voice asked from the comm-units.

"Seeing, still working on believing," Stark answered. "Where's Banner, has he shown up yet?"

"Banner?" Steve questioned, confused.

"Just keep me posted," Stark insisted. "I need a soft spot..."

"Eyes and mouth, always. And Banner's a couple of miles out yet Stark," Harry answered. "But he's making a good clip, so he won't be long."

"How do you know that?" Natasha asked. "No one's seen him since Loki escaped."

"If I told you that, I may have to kill you," Harry joked. "After, I promise. Ooh, Loki is airborne."

"We see him," Clint agreed as they took cover on a bridge behind some up-turned cars for a moment.

It didn't take them long to split up a little. Captain America to see to the evacuation of people who had gotten trapped on the streets, and Clint and Natasha working together to provide cover and help some people out of a bus that they'd been trapped in.

The police had shown up too, made a barricade of police cars in various streets, called the National Guard (who would apparently be a while, Harry wasn't surprised to hear that exclamation as he passed over head, he was just impressed the cops had shown up as quickly as they did), and were firing up at the invading force. Captain America reached them and started giving directions – all 'Leader Mode' and killing aliens with his shield.

Even if the blue spandex had meant the police didn't take him seriously when he first reached them – it seemed New Yorkers were a bit cynical about caped crusaders. Who knew?

Iron Man got the massive armoured sky-snake-thing turned around and not going too far out into the rest of the city – key word was _containment_ as much as anything else. If they could stop the mess from getting too far out from Stark Tower, then so much the better.

"Well, we got its attention. What the hell was step-two?" Stark asked.

"Let it chase us a bit, and then kill it in a place where it won't cause _too_ much damage when it falls out of the sky," Harry answered as he raced along beside the man.

"I want to study that thing when this is over," Stark insisted, taking a moment to point to Harry's broomstick. "I don't get how that works."

"Questions later, aliens now," Harry answered firmly, a slight smile on his faces as he proved to Tony which of them had greater manoeuvrability in the air by doing a _very_ tight turn back and silently casting a powerful incendio with the Elder Wand, right in the monster's mouth and down its throat. Something he'd have done to the bloody basilisk if he'd _known_ that spell in his second year – which he _should_ have, but he didn't dwell on second year DADA if he could help it.

"That worked," Stark noted, surprise and I-can't-deal-with-this-shit-seriously-right-now _all_ through his voice as he watched the sky-snake-thing burn to a near-total _crisp_ before its ashes even hit the roofs of the nearest buildings.

Then more of the flying alien chariots were on their tail, and they split up – but headed back towards where Agents Romanoff, Barton and Captain America were fighting the aliens. A collection of lightning bolts just ahead of them, along with a flash of red, indicated that Thor had joined the rest of the team on the ground.

"What's the story upstairs?" Steve asked.

"The barrier surrounding the Cube is impenetrable," Thor answered solemnly.

"Thor's right," Stark quipped as they both flew past. It seemed that _he_ had tried it before the rest of them managed to catch up. "We've got to deal with these guys."

"How do we do this?" Natasha asked, genuinely seeking orders and direction. She wasn't stupid, but she wasn't normally in a soldiering sort of situation, so orders were something she could grab onto, something to make the chaos of a war as imbalanced as this a little less impossible feeling.

"As a team," Steve answered firmly.

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor stated.

"You mean the person _controlling_ Loki," Clint reminded gravely. "And for that, you'll have to get in line behind me, and probably Loki himself once we snap him out of it."

Harry, for all that he was a little distracted by the latest sky-snake-thing coming through the portal (it was already chasing Iron Man, and he had the alien chariots on his own bristles), was just _so_ proud of Clint right then, and he'd only known the guy for a short while.

"Save it," Steve ordered curtly. "Until we snap Loki out of it, _if_ we can even _do_ that, then for now he's the enemy – and he's gonna keep this fight focused on us, and that's what we need. Without him at least guiding them for now these things could run wild." He was just about to start giving orders, assignments for each of the soldiers in their crew, when the sound of a motorcycle behind him distracted him.

"So," greeted Banner as he killed the engine of the cheaply-purchased old motorcycle and hopped off, walking the last few steps to join them. "This all seems... _horrible_," he offered.

"Stark, we got 'im," Steve reported.

"Banner?" Stark questioned.

"Just like you two said," the Captain agreed.

"Then tell him to suit up," he ordered. "I'm bringing the party to you. Westley?"

"Coming in from your twelve Stark," Harry answered as he tricked another chariot into crashing against the road a couple of blocks away from the main group.

"Ah-uh-I don't see how that's a party," Natasha said, choking a little when she saw the sky-snake-thing that had just chased Iron Man around a corner (clipping it rather badly, it should be noted) and came into view of the rest of them.

Well, once Banner turned around they could all see it anyway. He'd been facing the wrong way. The mild-mannered PhD gave them all a 'this is really for real, isn't it?' look, but otherwise didn't hesitate to start walking towards the monster either, still a little ways off as it was.

"Dr Banner," Steve called, not moving after him more than one step and an outstretched arm, "now might be a good time for you to get angry."

"That's my secret, Captain," Banner said, a slight smile on his face as he looked over his shoulder and walked a few more paces before stopping. "I'm always angry," he explained, and it was said so calmly that you'd never know. Except that right on cue he grew, split his shirt, turned green, and drew back both his top lip and his massive fist just in time to punch the low-flying sky-snake-thing that had been following Iron Man right in the nose, grounding it suddenly.

Harry decided as he flew in from the opposite direction, with a perfect view, that inertia and kinetic energy could do truly incredible and spectacular things sometimes. The force of the sudden halt had the tail rearing up, some of the sky-snake-thing's armour falling off, and just when it was about to fall tail-over-head, Stark fired a small missile at it, blowing it up into lots of itty-bitty pieces that could be collected by the street-sweepers once the fighting was over.

It made for a big and fiery boom, granted, and everyone on the ground took some kind of cover – Natasha and Steve behind the Captain's shield, Clint behind a car, Thor raised his hammer to shield his eyes... Okay, Banner didn't deliberately take cover, but he was mostly shielded by the head of the creature itself, which also mostly survived the ka-boom intact.

~oOo~

The alien army that had dropped from the sky-snake-thing, on the other hand, didn't take too kindly to the thing being destroyed. They'd screamed before too, when Harry had fried the first one extra-crispy.

Right now though, Stark and Harry both came in to land with the others. A basic defensive circle was formed – side by side and back to back – as they surveyed their odds for a moment and the big green Banner roared back. Natasha, being the one facing Stark Tower most directly of them all, was the one to see two _more_ sky-snake-things and a whole mess more flying chariots exit the portal. She also drew all of their attention to it.

"Call it Captain," Stark deferred.

"Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment," the man in the star-spangled uniform answered firmly. "Barton, I want you on _that_ roof," he ordered, pointing to the one he particularly meant. It was fairly high up, but a flat roof that even had a door-access to lower levels. "Eyes on everything. I want you to call out patterns and strays. Stark, Westley, you two are on perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back, or you turn it to ash."

"One of you give me a lift?"Clint asked.

Harry nodded and brought his broom to hover while Stark just took off.

Clint slipped his bow into a holding slot on his quiver – the two touching causing all the arrows he'd fired so far to appear in their slots again, just as Harry had promised they would – and climbed on behind the man he'd really only just met a _very_ short time ago, all things considered.

"Thor, we need you to try and bottle-neck that portal. Slow 'em down. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up," the Captain continued.

Thor nodded, swung his hammer around, and took off. Harry, satisfied that Clint was sitting in such a way as would _not_ crush his balls, also took off, but they could still hear the orders the Captain was giving as they flew off.

"You and me, we stay here on the ground. We keep the fighting here. And Hulk... " Harry guessed that was the name they gave to Banner's big green alter-ego, "_Smash_."

It was quite the thing to see him jumping and, indeed, smashing the aliens as he acted the part of an indestructible, less hairy, massive green gorilla in tattered trousers.

"Want a bit of magic so they won't spot you?" Harry offered as he deposited Clint on the roof that would be his look-out perch, the notice-me-not spell just waiting for him to cast it.

"I think I can manage without," Clint answered with a smirk. "Thanks though."

Harry nodded and took off to his own duties. A perimeter three blocks out. Wonderful. Wards weren't exactly the fastest thing to set up, and a 'muggle repelling' spell probably wouldn't work on aliens. On the other hand, raising a _physical_ wall wasn't _nearly_ as hard, but would also trap any civilians in the danger zone that were still around. Bad idea. Not to mention _damn_ hard to explain, and probably kinda tricky to do over such a large area. Even if Harry Potter was dead and he didn't know the laws regarding magical secrecy in the States (he'd read the basic guide that applied to Europe, but that was back when he'd been leaving England for Wales), he'd stick as much as he could to things that could, potentially, be explained away by science. People _will_ excuse the impossible if they have to, he'd just as soon not have to deal with the local version of Aurors. Though why they hadn't responded to _this_, he had no idea. Unless they decided it wasn't a magical issue and wasn't their problem, of course... or it was politicians. They were always getting in the way of effectiveness for that sort of thing.

Harry whistled, impressed, as he caught Thor blowing up a couple more sky-snake-things before they could get totally out of the portal. He then set himself to enjoying the rush of a Wonski Feint and laughed as _five_ alien chariots crashed and burned in the middle of the street behind him.

"_Sir, the Council is on,"_ he heard Hill say, and it would have _had_ to have been to Fury, since he was the one Harry had put the spell on so that he could listen in. He'd been having the general snap of orders and drone of busy-work in his ear the whole time, but _that_ sounded ominous.

Still, there were aliens to kill and Fury wasn't exactly fast about responding to that. He'd worry about this ominous sounding Council when they said something dangerously stupid and made it an order.

"Stark, you got a lot of strays sniffing your tail," came Barton's voice over the comms.

"Just trying to keep them off the streets," Stark answered.

"Well, they can't bank worth a damn," Clint said. "Find a tight corner."

"I will roger that," Stark answered, some slight uncertainty in his voice as he was clearly trying to think of where he could find an appropriately tight corner.

"Or learn to pull tighter manoeuvres," Harry quipped as he got his current tail of three to all crash into each other.

"I'll put that on the list for the next upgrade," Stark growled back, voice a little strained as he made a smooth turn through an intersection. It took out one alien chariot. He put the breaks on for a moment and let them rush past him so he had a line to open fire, but once he'd blown up a second he kept going on the having them chase him bit. "Oh boy," he said – probably to himself, but the comms carried it anyway – as he ducked into a pedestrian's tunnel. When he came out again and turned sharply, the rest of his tail failed to follow, crashing rather spectacularly into the side of a stone building. "Nice call," he said, and it was _definitely_ directed to Barton over Harry. "What else ya got?"

"Well Thor's taking on a squadron down on sixth," Clint answered.

"And he didn't invite me," Tony said, mock-hurt. He didn't even seem totally aware of the sky-snake-thing that was on his tail.

Didn't matter. Hulk crashed his way through a building and grabbed the massive beasty by the corner of its mouth and managed to alter its flight-path even if he didn't get it all the way down to the ground.

Harry kept an eye on it, but soon enough figured he wasn't needed there. Three blocks out was getting to be a generous estimate though (for which he sent his silent thanks whatever higher power was on their side), so he moved closer in.

~oOo~

"Captain, none of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal," Natasha said, sounding tired over the comm-units.

"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it," Steve pointed out.

"Well, maybe it's not about guns," she suggested.

"If you want to get up there, you're going to need a ride," the Captain said, eyeing the aliens that had just landed nearby and were slowly stalking towards them, weapons out.

"She's got a ride," Harry answered them, swooping in. "National Guard's arrived by the way."

"Well, I was planning on taking one of theirs, but okay," Agent Romanoff agreed.

"You don't want to learn how to fly a strange craft when you're in the air in a confined space and dangerous conditions," Harry answered firmly as the _very_ attractive red-head climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Both of her guns were already out of bullets. She'd been using stolen alien weapons, small knives, and dangerously electrified gloves for the past five minutes.

The two of them left the Captain behind, though Stark blasted through a short while later, taking out a good portion of the foot-soldiers by just physically going straight through them. Unenviable. He took out a few that were climbing the building that Clint was perched on top of as well, though more by firing upon them than smashing through.

It didn't take long for Harry to pick up more tails though, or for them to open fire.

"Hold on," he warned Natasha. "You're in for some fancy flying."

"Maybe I should just grab one of theirs," Natasha said once Harry had levelled out again, five of his six tails smashed – into the ground and each other mostly. The sixth was only still there because it was so much further back than the rest.

"Alright," Harry allowed. "I'll double back and land you on my last tail. Think you can fly it?"

"I'm sure I can figure it out. Stark Tower is only a two blocks away in a straight line now anyway," she assured him. "And you can get back to active fighting."

Harry nodded and slowed down, letting the alien chariot catch up with them. He dropped down a little and separated the passenger in the 'chariot' part from the rest of the assemblage, then moved up again so that Natasha could jump on and take the reigns.

He stuck with her until he was sure she'd manage, then split off. He'd heard a very dangerous word come from his spying spell on Fury. One of this 'Council' had said 'nuclear', and Harry was fairly sure they were talking 'warhead' rather than 'energy'.

"Director Fury," Harry said into his comm-unit as he flew back to his perimeter – Stark had abandoned it in favour of the main fighting, so it was just him that far out now.

"_Excuse me Councilmen,"_ Fury's voice said, through both spell and comm now. _"What?"_

"If you tell them 'no', they'll go over your head, Director. I've dealt with idiots like your Council before," Harry informed him.

"_So?"_ the man asked, and Harry was willing to bet he was sticking to ambiguous stuff so that he didn't give away to the Council that they were being talked about.

"Tell them 'yes' anyway and then don't follow through. After all, you don't have to tell them _when_ you're sending that nuke," Harry suggested. "Besides, who's to say the President, assuming they answer to him, gave that order the go-ahead? Oh, and that question you want to ask but can't right now? Magic, Director Fury. I'll remove the eaves-dropping spell once this is over. I just figured it would be a good idea to know what was going on at your end, but you didn't have comms up when we left. National Guard's reached Manhattan by the way, and actually, is it possible send a nuke or two _into_ that portal."

"_Yes to the first, but I'll have to get checks on the rest,"_ Fury answered, and with a sigh, the sound of his voice through the comm-unit ended, though Harry could still hear him talking to the Council. _"Very well,"_ he agreed. _"I am not happy about this decision, but I'll give the order."_

There was a pause, a pregnant silence from the other end of the listening spell, and then Harry heard Hill's voice, worried and disbelieving and hopeful that she'd heard wrong.

"_You're not really going to order a nuclear strike on the island of Manhattan, are you Director?"_ she asked. _"You spoke to someone else, was it one of the Avengers? They didn't really suggest -"_

"_Agent Hill,"_ Fury cut off patiently. _"It was suggested to me that if I _failed_ to agree with the Council, they'd subvert my command. It was _also_ suggested we could send that nuke _into_ the portal. They've been sending their fire-power here. Let me know if it's possible. It can be a last resort if we need it."_

~oOo~

"Westley," Clint's voice distracted Harry from Fury's planning and his own alien-killing. "Loki's in Stark Tower. Just had a close encounter with the Hulk. Hulk walked out. Might be your best chance to see about that hold on him."

"Roger dodger," Harry answered, and did an about-face on his broom. He crashed ten more alien chariots along the way and rained fire down on a couple of swarms of foot-soldier types, but he didn't alter his course or slow down a bit. He barely even paused to swipe the sceptre off Stark's patio as he flew in through the broken windows and dropped down by Loki – where he was wheezing in pain in a crater exactly his size. There were three others just like it. All of them a few inches deep.

"You ever hear the tale of Jonah?" Harry heard Stark ask his on-board AI.

"Sorry I'm not going to see that one," he muttered with a shake of his head. "Alright Loki... what colour are your eyes?" he asked the suffering Asgardian, knowing he wouldn't get a response as he leant over him. "Ah, blue, of course. That won't fade for a while, but the sooner we know what's what the better. Legillimens."

He was jarred out of his probing before he was finished by the feel of someone tugging on the sceptre he was holding in his hand – it really wasn't something he wanted just _anybody_ taking after all.

"Is there are reason for this interruption, Agent Romanoff?" Harry asked, not releasing the sceptre to her now that she had his attention.

"Dr Selvig's back to himself, and he says he built in a way to cut the power when he was under. We need the sceptre to close the portal," she answered.

"It's not just about closing the portal," Harry informed her, standing up with a sigh but still not relenting the implement. "It's about making sure that the tosser on the other side _never_ gets the idea of trying to open the way again. Preferably by atomising his head."

"Can you do that?" Natasha asked seriously. "It looks like it's just a vacuum of space on the other side."

"Then it's a good thing that _we_ have one of his _best_ weapons, isn't it?" Harry said with a dangerous smile, before he wrapped his arm around Natasha's waist and popped them up to the roof. He'd seen the roof clearly enough on his way in to be able to apparate up there, before that, it would have been iffy. "I'm not done with Loki, but he's not going anywhere. Selvig still up here?" he asked, looking around for the man.

"Don't ever do that again," Natasha said. "Dr Selvig is just over there," she added, pointing towards the man who was setting up his computer again.

"_Westley,"_ Fury's voice echoed in Harry's ear, not in his comm, just Fury now taking advantage of Harry's spell to whisper in his ear. _"We _can_ send a nuke straight into the portal, and I have permission from the President. He's not happy with the Council right now though. What's the status?"_

"I'm just about to use the sceptre and the Tesseract together to return fire through the portal before I close it. It'll take a minute to set up, but we aren't going to lose in that amount of time. Nuke's as well can only help," Harry answered calmly, pausing between Natasha and Selvig. Both could hear him, and both seemed equally terrified of _just_ how calmly he'd said all that. "This enemy needs to be atomised."

"_I copy,"_ Fury agreed, a bit of a growl in his voice. _"Hill, do it,"_ he ordered, voice a bit louder for that before he went a bit quieter again. _"What's the status on Loki?"_

"It took a pounding from Banner, and I haven't finished checking him yet, but I'm pretty sure Loki's in his own right mind again," Harry replied. "I'll give you a full report and recommendation once I've finished checking him."

"_Appreciated. Well, get to work Westley. The nukes are on their way."_

"As long as they're only aimed at the inside of the portal, that's not a problem. Roger, copy, and all that jazz."

"Westley?" Natasha asked.

"Fury has at least one nuclear warhead on its way to in there," Harry said, gesturing absently to the portal. "Council ordered a nuclear strike on Manhattan, he's just manipulating orders."

She quietly swore in Russian, her eyes wide.

"I second that," Clint's voice said in their comms. "What do we do about _that_?"

"Keep the air as clear as you can," Harry answered. "We don't want any of the jets getting hit before they release their payload, and we sure as _hell_ don't want any of the nukes hitting anything before they go through."

"Copy that," Clint answered, "and Nat? Could you get down here? We're gonna need more ground crew if we want to keep them out of the sky."

"'Down here'? Clint, aren't you on a roof-top?"

"Roof-top got blown up. Landing was a bit painful, but I'm in one piece and still going at it. Haven't reached the Cap yet but..."

While that was going on, Harry picked up a pebble, waved his wand over it with a muttered "portus" before he handed it to the lady.

"I'm on my -" she said as she started to walk towards the elevator, "-way. _God_, that was worse than whatever he did _before_," she finished as she landed – on hands and knees – on the bit of road where Captain America and Thor were fighting the Chitauri.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry was glad that he didn't have to conjure anything. Everything that he needed was right there and available to him. Including Selvig's vast intellect, even if he wasn't interested in turning the Tesseract into a weapon. The fact of the matter was that it already _had_ been, or Harry wouldn't have the sceptre he was currently mounting on the modified rig. He'd had to use magic to manipulate the stuff inside the barrier, and it had been harder than it had a right to be, but he'd managed.

The jets with their payloads came by just as he finished his set up, and were all clear in time for him to launch _his_ attack on the Chitauri and their not-actually-a-Chitauri rulers – that were worse than the Chitauri being as they were smarter and more naturally difficult to kill than the aliens that were currently swarming Manhattan.

That were currently dropping like puppets with their strings cut, all around Manhattan. Guess the nukes did it for them then. Still, Harry wasn't going to leave anything to chance and fed his magic into the weapon he'd made from the portal-contraption, the Tesseract itself, and the sceptre.

The spell that rushed up and out to the space beyond the portal was incredible and would, if he had any say in the matter, never _ever_ be performed again by _anybody_. Including him.

It was all at once fire and ice, entrails being expelled, body pieces being hacked off and hacked up, explosions, implosions, stretching and shrinking and twisting and breaking and _pain_ and _death_ and all in one great burst of _beautiful shining blue_ that killed the mind of the sceptre as it left, and sent the Tesseract into dormancy soon after, which in turn caused the portal to close.

Harry took back the sceptre as soon as the barrier around the Tesseract went down (better safe than sorry), and removed the Tesseract as well, just to be cautious. He didn't _touch_ the Cube of course: he used a pair of tongs and set it back into the metal suitcase it had been brought up to the roof in originally.

"Status?" Harry asked, calling out on the comm-unit.

"We're all fine, and headed for Stark Tower," Steve answered.

"See you soon then," Harry replied. "Come along Dr Selvig," he instructed gently. With the sceptre tucked under an arm and the Tesseract secure in its suitcase in the hand of that same arm, Harry grabbed the recently freed doctor with his other hand and did the lazy thing – he apparated them down to where Harry had left Loki.

"What -?" Selvig started to ask.

Beyond silently checking that he hadn't left any of Selvig behind with that last apparition, Harry didn't much bother with him. He hadn't finished checking Loki was clean yet after all. Going through the mind of someone a couple of thousand years old took a bit longer to check all the places foreign influence could stick itself than a mind only thirty-some years old.

It was made even more of a tricky business when Harry kept on finding _different_ influences placed on Loki throughout his life and mind, and almost every spell placed on the poor guy by a different person than placed the spell before.

"Good, you didn't go anywhere," Harry said with a smile as he pushed Loki back into his crater – he'd been starting to sit up. "Now, let me finish making sure that all external magical influences have been removed from your mind."

Loki's eyes popped wide open at that, and Harry took advantage of his stunned compliance to re-enter the Asgardian's mind and pick up where he'd left off. He didn't notice when the rest of the team arrived, some a bit bloodied, some a bit banged up, most of them bruised and scraped, and all of them tired.

Even the Hulk.

~oOo~

Harry didn't even notice Stark getting out of his Iron Man suit and serving people drinks (small miracles, his kitchenette had survived even if his his windows, a wall, and his floor _hadn't_. It was about when Steve was ready for his second drink – upright, downright, clean-cut _Steve_ going for a _second_ _drink_ – that Harry finally sat back on his heels, his searching and de-bugging of Loki's mind finally complete.

Loki let out a sob and curled himself up in his crater.

"Loki?" Thor boomed in concern when he saw that. "What have you done to him?" he demanded of Harry.

"I have removed _every_ taint from his mind," Harry answered solemnly. "There were a lot more in there than _just_ the one from the tosser who gave Loki the sceptre."

Thor's brow furrowed in confusion. "But... Who could have... Who _would_ have... _When_?"

"Generally when he was sleeping," Harry answered as he reached out to gently stroke Loki's hair in comfort as the grown man cried into Harry's knee. "Though there were a few that were like the sceptres hold on him: placed insidiously over time and in every interaction they had."

"What was done to him?" Natasha asked as Clint went to pour more drinks.

"Mostly? Lots of little behavioural modifications, which I _suspect_ were innocently intended, that piled up and twisted around each other," Harry answered, "and then got _really_ twisted with the few big ones like the spell from sceptre making a muck of things."

"Here," Clint said, coming around from where he'd been pouring drinks and offering two glasses to Harry. "One's for Loki."

Harry nodded his thanks and accepted them both, setting them on the floor at his side before he tried coaxing Loki into opening up enough for a drink.

"So what happens now?" Steve asked. "It sounds to me like Westley is saying Asgard might not be the best place for Loki, but he probably can't stay here either. I can't see S.H.E.I.L.D. taking to the idea too kindly, even if Loki wasn't in his right mind."

"Yeah," Barton agreed solemnly. "I'll probably be getting a discharge because I was compromised, even if I got a clean bill from our Mr Wizard."

"For that matter, so will I," Romanoff added. "We're both S.H.E.I.L.D. agents, and we took off with that jet without authorisation. Even if Fury _wanted_ us to come in and save the day like we did, which is possible..." she trailed off, shaking her head.

"And I think I heard someone say something about the National Guard?" Banner added, having de-Hulk-ed and been given new clothes by Stark while Harry was in Loki's mind. "I can't see _them_ being all that merciful if _they_ get hold of him either," he added, and he was speaking from experience. "Or me, for that matter."

"You're part of the hero squad now, big guy," Stark lectured Banner kindly, "and you're _my_ guest. The army can go jump."

Banner smiled a shy, crooked, grateful smile. "Thanks Tony."

"Only stupid people would mess with the guy who _made_ Iron Man after all," Harry quipped. "From scratch, in a cave, with minimal resources and a hole in his chest to boot, if the papers of the time it happened are to be believed. I'd say that makes Mr Stark a pretty dangerous guy."

"I'm flattered, but you're wrong," Stark quipped with a smile. "I'm _dangerous_ because I'm _charming_."

Steve shook his head, his old blanket-mild-disgust with Stark returning now that the fight was over and lives didn't depend on their ability to work together. "That's great for Bruce, but it doesn't answer what we're going to do about Loki," Steve pointed out, dragging the conversation back to an as-yet unresolved but very important point.

"I could take him with me when I leave," Harry suggested.

"Leave?"

"What?"

"You're not -?"

"But -!"

"Where -?"

Harry quickly raised a hand to silence them all. "Yes," he said, once they'd shut their mouths and were staring silently at him. "_Leave_. I was on my was from Germany to Switzerland and then Italy when you picked me up."

"Would we even see you again if you left?" Bruce asked quietly, his question solemn and concerned. "Ever?"

"Don't know," Harry answered honestly. "Maybe. I'm not exactly dedicated to my travel plans, so I _could_ put them off, but disappearing seems to me like just the thing Loki needs right now, and I can help with that."

"I don't see why you couldn't _stay here_ and disappear into the crowds," Tony suggested, a little petulantly. "You promised answers after the fight, Westley. You're not skipping out on that, so you may as well make yourself comfortable _here_. I'm sure we can help Loki just as well as Banner."

"I like the sound of staying on Midgard," Loki spoke up, his voice quiet, but clear. "I do not wish to return to Asgard as I once did."

"Brother..." Thor said, a saddened, pained expression on his face.

"For _you_, I would," Loki assured the blonde, though he didn't look up. Didn't let anybody but Harry see the tear-tracks still on his face or the red puffiness of his eyes. "But though you are my brother, Asgard is no longer my home. I must find a new place for myself. I believe that Midgard may hold such a place for me."

"Does for most everybody else," Harry quipped kindly, then sighed. "Three years," he said firmly to the group. "I will stay in America for _three_ years. Not a day more than that, though if you need me, I'll come. Suppose I should help with the clean up around here anyway," he offered, and pulled out his wand.

A quick, powerful, blanketing _repairo_ had Tony Stark's place of residence looking like it had never seen the middle of a war-zone.

"Wow," Tony said, stunned as he looked around him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

~oOo~

Fury arrived on the roof of the Stark Tower in a helicopter a little under half-an-hour after Tony and Bruce have finished the two-hour process of disassembling the incredible bit of scientific engineering that allowed the Tesseract to create a hole in the sky over Manhattan. They don't want that sort of thing repeated, but that doesn't mean they don't want to understand how it worked. After all, they're already planning to make a device that will allow Thor to use the Tesseract to come and go between the Tower and his home in Asgard.

"I believe we have some things to talk about," Fury announced to the group – all of whom had gone up to the roof to meet him, including Loki and Selvig. "And a certain spell to remove," he added, looking at Harry pointedly with his single eye.

"You put a spell on Fury?" Stark asked, shocked and – reluctantly, because it sounded unethical – impressed. "What did you do?"

"I spelled his eye-patch so I could hear everything going on around him," Harry answered as he withdrew his holly wand. A little bit of 'foolish wand waving' later with barely a mutter of a spell incantation past his lips, and Harry slipped the wand back into its holster. "There you go, clean of spells. I even got rid of the bananas I'd left embossed on your coat."

"_Thank you_, Mr Westley," Fury said, grateful but pissed that such removals had been necessary, and not bothering to hide it.

"So, shall we return to where there are comfortable chairs and drink options?" Stark suggested.

Fury nodded and let the man who actually owned the building lead the way back down, if only because he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of having all these people in back of him.

The short trek was made in silence, and once they were inside the silence broke only to name drink preferences before they were all seated with a glass of something. Steve, Harry, Clint and Loki were having water, Natasha and Bruce were having different flavours of ice tea, Thor had been given a bottle of beer with the assurance that mortal liquor would not be potent enough to affect him (because _no one_ wanted to have to deal with a drunk god after they day they'd already had), Fury had asked for and actually been given a glass of red wine, while Stark poured scotch for himself.

"Can I take it from the lack of restraints on Loki and the general ease of the room with him loose that he is no longer a threat?" Fury asked.

"You can," Harry answered.

"He also doesn't appreciate being talked about as though he weren't present," Loki added with a frown.

Fury didn't answer that.

Clint did though. "Fury's always like that," he informed the god he was sitting next to, his voice low and quiet. "Does it to everyone. It's nothing personal."

"What about Selvig?" Fury asked.

"See?" Clint quipped softly to Loki, who didn't smile, but did give the archer a grateful look.

"I am myself again, Director," Selvig answered for himself.

"Glad to hear it," Fury said, giving the man a slight incline of his head. It wasn't concern for the man that made him glad to hear it. It was concern for the security of the planet. Selvig had proven that, under the control of someone else, he was quite capable of opening portals for armies from outer space. Fury would like that situation to not be repeated.

"The threat is neutralised?" Fury questioned.

"The _current_ threat is neutralised," Stark corrected.

"As long as the Tesseract is on Midgard, and being used as you have been endeavouring to use it, it will continue to attract threats," Thor added. "As I said before, it is a signal to the nine realms that you are ready for a higher form of war."

"The sooner you get the Tesseract off this planet, the safer you will all be," Loki contributed. "It belongs in Asgard, not here."

"So we'll be working on making something for Thor to take it back to Asgard in," Banner finished firmly. No one argued with Banner, even when he was regular-person-sized and drinking ice tea.

But Fury surprised them all with his answer.

"Good," he said firmly. "If the Tesseract is out of our reach, then I don't have to deal with the Council bitching about finding old HYDRA blueprints and making weapons from the damn thing. You were at least part right, Captain: the world _hasn't_ changed all that much since you went under. There are _still_ idiot politicians giving stupid orders that engineers and soldiers have to follow."

"Like firing nukes on Manhattan," Harry said lowly, catching everybody's attention.

"What is a 'nuke'?" Thor asked, confused while all others around him went wide-eyed. Even Loki. After all, the trickster had actually spent time getting to know a bit about those he was planning to rule. He didn't know _everything_ of course, but he knew more than his brother did.

"It's short of 'nuclear warhead', and it's the really big bomb that we fired into the portal before Mr Westley did whatever it was that _he_ did," Fury answered. "One of which could have wiped out the entire island of Manhattan and its considerable civilian population." The man sighed. "Right now, S.H.I.E.L.D. troops are moving in on Manhattan to start the clean-up. They'll collect the bodies of the Chitauri, as well as their weapons, and the new Council will probably order the tech to be duplicated rather than disposed of. At least I can _definitely_ make sure the Chitauri themselves will be disposed of. I don't care what we could learn from their dead bodies. They're not hanging around. All my operatives have orders to incinerate them wherever they are found."

Everyone took a moment to digest that bit of information. Fury had just _admitted_ to some of the crazy inner-workings of S.H.I.E.L.D. to them. With little to no prompting, cajoling, nagging, or dragged-up dirt so that he couldn't wriggle a lie out instead. He clearly wanted them on his side in case of more shit hitting the fan, meaning he needed their trust, which in turn called for honesty from the man who's secrets had secrets.

"What's next?" Natasha asked quietly. "What happens next?

"Chaos, probably," Harry answered her. Quickly, simply, and before Fury could even open his mouth to give _his_ answer to that question. "Battle's over, bad-guy's dead, now is the time for the victims to recover and bemoan their injured state and seek out scapegoats."

"Scapegoats?" Thor asked, in the same way he had asked about monkeys when Fury had wanted to know how Loki had made Clint and Selvig his personal flying ones. All innocently confused and hoping for clarification.

Silently, Loki had the same expression on his face.

Harry sighed and got out of his chair. "Goat," he said, and, pushing his magic to the 'earth' tattoo on his back, transformed into the cloven-hoofed animal with horns. Rather than cycling through lots of different kinds though, he just stuck with the basic domestic goat, mottled black-brown-and-white with horns curved back because he was a _billy_ goat not a _nanny_ goat and no one was chopping _his_ horns. Then he pushed his magic to the 'fire' tattoo and changed back to himself and re-took his seat. "They used to be offered as sacrifices, still are in some countries, to take the place of someone who has done something wrong, basically taking the blame for whatever and paying for it, _dearly_, more often than not."

"Oh," Thor and Loki _both_ said quietly as understanding dawned. Even Loki wasn't all-knowing after all, and despite that he'd taken more time to get to know the world he was in than Thor had, even with the disparity in time _spent_ on Earth by each of them, Loki had clearly not come across that expression yet.

"I suppose I'd be the best taker for that position," Loki suggested, his tone implying a resigned if forlorn acceptance of what he fully expected to be his fate.

"There _are_ people who would agree with you," Harry admitted. "But as you were mind-fucked at the time, a case can be made in your defence. I'd just as soon keep _you_ out of the press though, except for as a victim, blackmailed and mind-controlled into doing something you didn't want to."

"Public Relations isn't something that S.H.I.E.L.D. _generally_ gets involved in," Fury pointed out, almost delicately. "Our media relations department generally does cover-ups, not getting heroes popular with the people they're helping."

"If you can cover this up, I will be impressed," Harry informed the man. "I'll give you a week of damage control _your_ way before I start looking for a PR guru."


	8. Chapter 8

Harry ended up _not_ needing to call that PR guru, and even called and admitted to Fury that, yes, he was impressed. S.H.I.E.L.D. really did an excellent job of covering the whole thing up. They called it 'Hurricane Kristy' and added in a truck load of experimental drugs being toppled early on and causing a mass hallucination. There weren't any witches or wizards paying him a visit about his use of magic in front of muggles – S.H.I.E.L.D. were _very_ thorough. The 'Avengers' were permitted to disappear into anonymity, and reconstruct their own lives.

Construction work is always going to be something that takes a while. Even if it's just repairs to a damaged building, it's still going to take a while. It's going to take even longer if the streets first have to be cleared of wrecked cars, alien corpses, and the debris of broken buildings and damaging explosives. And the dead, armoured, giant sky-snake-thing that's flopped so untidily on top of one of the buildings.

And yet there are New Yorkers who _don't believe_ they were attacked by aliens or that a band of seven 'superheroes' were what held them off and eventually blew them up (with the help of a couple of nukes, granted, but the sceptics don't believe there were nukes being flown and fired near their city either). Only partly thanks to the efforts of S.H.I.E.L.D. too, which was the _really_ impressive part. In New York, seeing was _not_ believing.

Truly, Harry loves the human mind some days. There are so _many_ people out there that _saw it begin_... and yet they so easily went along with the story they'd been fed, ignoring anyone who said otherwise. Aliens? Pfft. You must be one of the cracks from somewhere with cane fields! Superheroes? Gimme a break! No such thing. Either or both in _New York_? Yeah, right, and Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt had all gotten together and formed a boy-band with J.F.K. as their manager.

It was an over-all attitude that boiled down to: "Pull the other one, it's got bells on."

The insurance companies were having a field day with the claims they've been getting, which slowed down the repairs to the city even further, as they were demanding reports and professional assessments from at least three different companies as to the cost repairs _might_ be...

So Harry stayed in New York, and he rented a floor of the Stark Tower – yes, _rented_. He wouldn't let Tony talk him out of that. He's rented his room everywhere else he's stayed, New York would be no different. Besides, it gave him an excuse to explain property rental contracts to Loki, who he's sharing his rented floor with. Reconstructing a life is a bit more complicated than fixing up a building or twenty after all, and having someone there to support him as he gets started can only be good for Loki.

Clint and Natasha both handed in their resignations to Fury, and he accepted them, though he also promised that if they got bored of civilian life that S.H.I.E.L.D. would be glad to have them back when they were ready. The pair had just nodded. Released from duty and at liberty to do as they wished, they _didn't_ move into Stark Tower. They had lived their own lives before the mess, and had a house in Washington (state, not D.C.) which they shared and had previously retreated to as often as they could when taking their R&R leave in the past. Still, they'd be in touch and weren't adverse to being visited – provided they were given warning and the only one who visited was Harry, _maybe_ Loki and/or Dr Banner, but none of the others. Stark was annoyingly unwelcome, Thor was loud, and Steve was just... too clean for them to be comfortable in his company outside of a battle situation, apparently. They did agree, however, to having their own rooms in the Stark Tower if they were in New York for any reason, and to letting Stark pay for them to have their own airstrip in their expansive back yard (their house was out _past_ suburbia, they regularly had deer, and other wildlife, passing through) and gift them a jet and a couple of choppers that ran on clean energy rather than fossil fuel.

Steve moved out of his S.H.I.E.L.D.-quarters bunk and stashed his stuff in an apartment in Tony's building, though only with intent to stay long enough to sort out finances for a road-trip around the country. The motorbike Bruce had showed up to the fight on had apparently been vintage, if poorly cared for, and it's miraculous survival (along with properly finishing a fight against an enemy) was enough to get him out of his funk and ready to face the new age he'd woken up in. He had no real intention of _living_ with Stark once he'd had his road trip. They really didn't get along when there wasn't some kind of emergency forcing them to. It would do for a lay-over while he looked for an apartment somewhere _else_ once he'd had his road-trip though.

Thor got help from Stark's A.I. to call someone called Jane Foster, and generally stayed in the apartment that Tony had given him until this particular young woman arrived at Stark Tower the next day, and then _both_ of them stayed in the apartment, together, and didn't so much as come to the door for forty-eight hours, at which point they were visited by Selvig.

And, in fairness, Selvig was able to actually extricate Miss Foster from Thor's company and into the lab where he'd been working with Stark and Banner (who has also moved into Stark Tower. He was promised ten floors of R&D Candy Land after all, with a bonus of a friend who _isn't scared of the Hulk_ and who doesn't hold his anger-management issues against him) to make a device using the Tesseract that will allow Thor to come and go between Asgard and New York as he pleases.

Harry and Loki even got involved with that little project – little, because it only takes two days to finish – and their involvement comes essentially _after_ all the scientific work has been done and the construction mostly completed. Loki designed rune clusters (easy for him, he's been doing it for centuries after all) that key the device to take Thor to only _two_ _specific places_: New York's Central Park, near the lake, and Thor's private chambers in Asgard. Like a portkey, but not at the same time. Next, Harry used his magic to engrave these clusters and together they activate them – Thor too, because he's got _some_ magic in him, even if he doesn't use it much. Harry then enchanted the device to pass unnoticed by anyone who, basically, _isn't Thor_... or a member of small crew involved with the making of the device, and then Harry shrunk the whole thing so that it will hang easily on a chain (spelled separately so that it can only be lifted by Thor's own hand, much like his hammer) around Thor's neck and can be comfortably hidden under his armour.

Several pairs of eyes grew wide as they watched the Tesseract reduce in size to little more than a centimetre cubed, while remaining stable and not reducing its power-output at all.

"You promised me some answers Fred," Tony reminded Harry as he tears his eyes away from the shrunken, intensely complicated device they'd spent two days making. He's the first to use the given name of Harry's current alias. "I think I want to get to those now."

Harry sighed, but smiled in a tired way, and nodded his acquiescence.

~oOo~

Apart from when he was answering Tony's questions about magic, Loki's questions about Midgard, and Clint and Natasha's questions (via email) about how things were going in New York, Harry had taken to studying the sciences. Chemistry, physics, computer engineering and robotic engineering because he had two veritable geniuses in those fields living in the same building, but also medical science – because it was _damn useful_. He went out one weekend, found the magical quarter of Manhattan, and bought a bunch of books on healing magic to supplement his non-magical education in the same area.

So that was how he spent his three years in America. Studying extremely complicated textbooks, explaining the magical stuff to Tony and Bruce some days, and everything else to Loki on other days, and going out to see the sights worth seeing around the country on the weekends. It's the first time in several years where Harry hasn't had a regular sort of job that he does at the same time as he hangs out and enjoyed the country he's in. It is the first three years of his life since he left the British magical world behind that he hadn't had an income beyond the interest his bank account accrued.

Still, they are a fun and educational three years, but as he'd told these people who had become his friends, he would _not_ stay past three years. Loki would not be leaving America with him as had been originally suggested however.

Loki was content to stay in New York, living with Stark, Banner, and occasionally being visited by Ms Pepper Potts, in Stark Tower. He'd become a valuable member of the 'inventing crew' that went for days without proper food or sleep as they 'played' in Tony's R&D Candy Land. He used his magic to push the boundaries of science, and enjoyed likewise using science to push the boundaries of his magic. Of course, he _also_ enjoyed all the other things that New York had to offer – and New York could offer _anything_ and _everything_ if you could pay, and Stark was willing to extend his philanthropy to Loki in the form of giving him a fortnightly allowance (pay-cheque) so long as he _continued_ to be a playmate in R&D land.

So when the time came, and come it inevitably did, Fred Westley said his goodbyes to everyone and vanished into the crowds. Not long after that farewell, a man with green eyes, pale skin, and black hair arrived in Italy, going by and answering to the name Nicodemus Rage. In Italy, he learned about coffee in the mornings, and music in the afternoons, and on weekends he toured the country, taking in the sights. Three years after Nick Rage arrived in Italy, he left.

Samson Napes appeared in Greece. He spent his days attending art classes of all sorts and his evenings working as wait-staff in restaurants around the country for three years, taking in the sights and the beaches on the weekends before he made his goodbyes and disappeared.

Charles Harris was in Egypt, Cairo to be precise, sitting in a café and studying some ward schematics given to him by the local goblin branches (well, he'd bought a book of all the wards they'd found in Egypt to date from the little buggers, they never _gave_ _anything_ away, even to people who were working for them, and he wasn't), when he saw a flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up, he saw that there was actually a surprising amount of red hair in the street outside the café he had chosen. All of it familiar.

Coming from one direction was Bill Weasley. Older now, obviously, with the first threads of white coming through his red hair that was still long but tidy and tied back to show off the fang that still dangled from one ear, to say nothing of those scars down his face that were beginning to be joined by the sorts of wrinkles that meant he'd spent a lot of his life smiling. He wore generally light, local styles of clothes in creams, reds, and browns, but with a dragon-leather vest over the top that was covered with pockets. Fleur was on his arm, still blonde and slim and lovely even though _she_ was older now too, and if she had the first threads of white among her golden tresses – currently pulled up in a high horsetail so that it was off her neck – then they were impossible to distinguish. She was wearing the local fashions in such a way that it made the light cottons she was wearing look like the finest white silk.

Coming from the _other_ direction was Natasha Romanoff. She was older as well, though not as much time had passed since last he'd seen her. In contrast to Bill and Fleur though, who were dressed in light, worn and slightly faded clothing, Natasha was wearing black. Still in a local sort of style, but black and distinctly _her_ sort of clothes regardless of cultural fashions. Even the sheer black veil looked more like a tool for seduction than an item of modesty as it hid the lower half of her face.

Harry couldn't help but wonder if she was there alone or if Clint was somewhere around and he just hadn't spotted the guy yet. He lifted his eyes further to scan the rooftops for a sight of one of the other friends he'd made while in America. There! It as just a glimpse of mouse-blonde hair and something that _definitely_ looked like Hawkeye's weapon of choice, but now he knew they were both there. He also knew that if Clint was up on a rooftop rather than at Natasha's side, then it meant they were working.

When he looked back down at the street and its occupants, it was to find that Natasha was heading towards him. She didn't _look_ like she was fixed on him and had his current position as her eventual target, but she _was_ probably the best spy in the business, and a _damn_ good actress at that. She _wouldn't_ look like she was deliberately heading for him when she'd just been walking down the street, considering the wares of the various vendors all down its sides.

Still, Harry caught her eye once as she was slowly approaching and gave a small smile, which she answered. If it didn't impede her mission, whatever it was, she'd be stopping by for a chat.

Genuinely oblivious to his presence, Fleur pointed to the café he was in, Bill nodded, and it was clear that they planned to take a break from their shopping. Near him. Not good.


	9. Chapter 9

"Excuse me, but may I join you?" Natasha asked as she came to a halt by his table in the café.

Harry smiled, broadly, up at her. "I would be delighted, but you _must_ give me the honour of your name," he answered as he pushed out one of the unoccupied chairs at his table with his foot. His chosen table had room for four, and as he watched – out of the corner of his eye – Bill and Fleur looking for a table in the crowded café, he wished he'd chosen a table that only seated two.

"Natalie," Natasha answered as she took the seat offered. "Natalie Branton."

Harry had received an email from Clint and Natasha back when he was in Greece that they'd gotten married. It seemed she'd changed her cover name as well since the passage of vows.

"Charles Harris," he answered, still smiling.

Natasha raised one eyebrow just slightly, but didn't comment on his having a new name since they'd last seen each other. She knew he'd asked _her_ name because he wouldn't want to blow her cover if she was working. She also remembered him saying he hadn't gone by his own name for years. If she called him on it, it wouldn't help either of them.

"What brings to you Egypt, Miss Branton? Business or pleasure?" Harry asked, sticking with 'miss' because Natasha was _not_ wearing her wedding ring. At least, not anywhere visible.

Natasha smiled her best coy smile. "I can't have both?" she reposted.

"Well, I always say that if you're not enjoying your work, then you should find a different job," Harry answered happily.

Natasha's smile dropped and she gave a sigh. "But it's hard," she lamented as the waiter brought over the iced mineral water she'd ordered before joining him. "The people I came to do business with aren't taking me seriously, and I'm sure they're insulting me in Egyptian."

"Well, as a man who _can_ speak Egyptian, I would be pleased to offer my assistance," he offered.

"Thank you, but I wouldn't like to inconvenience you," Natasha demurred. "You must have your own reasons for being in Egypt?" she asked.

"No actually," Harry answered easily. "Well, nothing serious anyway. Taking some time out to study Egyptian curses and take in the sights."

"Egyptian curses are serious," interjected a masculine voice. The years hadn't done much to change it since Harry had last heard it, maybe given it a bit of a weathered edge, a hint of French accent – understandable if he spent any time with his wife's family in France.

"William," Fleur scolded. "Pardon us," she said in an apologetic tone, and Harry was aware of her veela 'allure' being directed at them, though not intensely. "My name is Fleur Weasley, this is my husband William. Would you mind if we shared your table? Every other table is full or has only one chair free – zut alore!"

Harry noticed Natasha blink a few times, and guessed she was shaking off the 'allure' as it had affected her with just that little motion that could be considered surprise at the French exclamation in Egypt.

"Fleur?" Bill asked, concerned, then he followed her wide-eyed gaze to Harry, and he gaped too. He clearly hadn't looked at Harry closely when he'd made his comment before. "Good God," he breathed. "But... you died over twenty years ago..." he whispered in shock.

Natasha and Harry still heard him, and Natasha pinned Harry with a curious look while he very carefully _didn't react_.

"You look remarkably well for a corpse, Mr Harris," she commented wryly, and then narrowed her eyes slightly as her own words sunk in.

Harry knew then that she'd just realised he hadn't aged – at all – since they'd last seen each other when he'd hit thirty-five. Anyone else wouldn't have, but Natasha was a spy, probably a better spy than anyone else in the world. She was _trained_ to notice those kind of minute details.

"Harris?" Bill repeated, confused, sure that he was looking at Harry Potter.

"Charles Harris," Harry supplied. "And I don't mind if you join us. Miss Branton?"

"I'm curious to know who they thought you were," she answered with a slight nod.

Bill and Fleur, both still staring at Harry a little fixedly, took the last two free chairs at the table Harry had claimed while the café had still been mostly empty.

"I apologise, Monsieur Harris," Fleur said. "It is just that you look so much like a good friend of ours... or perhaps how he might have looked if he had lived longer."

"What was his name?" Natasha asked kindly.

"Harry," Bill supplied. "Harry Potter. He... he was too young. Heart of gold, brave, best friend anyone could ask for, and..."

"And we didn't deserve his friendship," Fleur finished as Bill's neck tightened up, his gaze fixed on Harry, and her hands both clasped around the one of his hands that was on the table. The other was tightly balled on his knee beneath the table. "He was seventeen, and he left _us_, who he barely knew, a house that had belonged to his parents in his will, just because we were newly married shortly before he died."

"Why don't you think you deserved his friendship, if you don't mind me asking?" Harry enquired, genuinely curious, though he tempered it with gentleness. It seemed like they still hadn't gotten completely over his death, even after all these years.

"Because my youngest brother _pretended_ to be his best friend for years," Bill spat, self-loathing written all over his face. "Accepted _payment_ to _spy_ on him! If I'd still been home then... If I'd have _known_ then -! I'd have walloped him good for doing something so underhanded."

"William," Fleur soothed. "If I recall, you _did_ give Ronald a beating when you found out. Then all of your brothers did as well. Well," she corrected, "not Percy. He lectured."

"Perce isn't exactly a tower of physical ability," Bill allowed wryly, and forced himself to breathe deeply. "I'm sorry," he said to Harry and Natasha. "It's been a long time, but I'm still not exactly... adjusted to Harry being gone, even if I hardly got to spend any time with him when he was still alive."

"You don't have to apologise," Harry assured Bill as kindly as he could.

"Some people just... touch your life," Natasha offered. "You don't have to have known them long."

Bill and Fleur just nodded silently.

"We are sorry for bringing the atmosphere down," Fleur said, "and for mistaking you, Monsieur Harris. It is simply... we have never seen anybody with eyes as green as young Harry's."

Harry nodded in acceptance. He'd never done anything to disguise the colour of his eyes, or that he needed glasses. He didn't wear the same old round frames he'd worn back then, but he _did_ still wear glasses. Maybe, someday, he'd see about getting corrective eye surgery. Maybe. Someday. If Stark ever went into medicine beyond arc reactors that kept shrapnel from piercing his own heart, then certainly, but otherwise...

At least, after all these years, his 'famous scar' had finally and completely faded. If it hadn't... then Bill and Fleur would be questioning him on why he hadn't come back sooner rather than just missing the memory of him.

"Mr Harris _does_ have fascinating eyes," Natasha complimented with a smile.

Harry raised an eyebrow at her and quirked a smile. "Miss Branton," he said. "If you have a man in your life, I do believe he should spank you for flirting with strange men you just met in a café in Cairo."

"Monsieur Harris!" Fleur yelped.

Natasha glared at Harry for a moment, and _then_ blushed. Harry guessed that Clint had heard his comment and quipped something dirty himself into whatever invisible ear-piece she was wearing. If it wasn't that, then she could blush on demand, and _that_ was damn impressive.

"I do apologise, Mrs Weasley, Miss Branton. I should not have been so crass in the presence of such beauties. Or indeed in front of _any_ woman of recent acquaintance," Harry corrected himself, giving his apology to both women.

Just then, Natasha's phone rang in her handbag and she moved quickly to answer it.

"Hello? Yes," she pulled out a pen and scribbled something on a napkin. "Yes, I can be there in one hour. No," she said, and looked up at Harry. "I met a friend who's offered to translate for me, so I'm sure I can manage."

Harry lifted his empty glass in salute to her, a smile on his own lips as he closed his book with his other hand before he finished his drink.

"Yes," Natasha said, her tone insistent. "Alright, thank you. I'll be there soon," she finished, and closed the flip-top phone before dropping it back into her bag. She turned to Bill and Fleur. "It was lovely to meet you," she said, and she sounded sincere. It was possible that she even _was_. "Mr Harris? If you'd be kind enough to escort me to my business meeting?"

Harry nodded. "It was nice to meet you both," he said to Bill and Fleur as he stuffed his book into his bag and rose from his chair, offering his arm to Natasha.

"It was our pleasure," Fleur answered, and Bill nodded in agreement.

Harry dropped a few local coins on the table as a tip to the wait-staff who would clean up the table when they came by, and then he and Natasha left the little café behind.

~oOo~

"I'm surprised to see you in Cairo, Westley," Natasha said softly, her lips barely moving. "The last any of us knew, S.H.I.E.L.D. lost you when you passed through Turkey, since even in your emails you didn't tell us where you were."

"Turkey was a lay-over," Harry answered, his voice just as soft. "I spent a week seeing the sights, bought souvenirs, took pictures. Turkey doesn't have a _lot_ of sights to see that aren't equally available in any other country with a souk. I'm more surprised to see _you_ in Cairo."

"We go where the job takes us," Natasha answered. "We're not agents any more, but we freelance for S.H.I.E.L.D. still when they need someone with our particular skill-sets."

"Home-making got boring, didn't it?" Harry teased lightly. "No, I know," he said more seriously, cutting Natasha off before she could say anything. "You don't have to explain it to me again, I _did_ get your email when you and Hawkeye both decided to get back into it. I'm just surprised you were sent to _Cairo_ of all places. What's the job?"

"Despite appearances, things haven't _entirely_ calmed down since the riots," Natasha answered. "We are going to see a man about an arms deal."

"Of course we are," Harry sighed. "Can Hawkeye hear me through the comm-unit that I'm guessing you're wearing even though I can't see it?"

Natasha nodded. "He says he'll definitely spank me later, and offers an invitation if you want to watch," she relayed, perfectly calmly.

"Tempting, but I'll probably pass," Harry answered with a smile.

"Did you know them?" Natasha asked suddenly. "The Weasley couple. Did you know them?"

"You're really asking if I am the person they mistook me for," Harry said, "and if I am, or was, then why they think I'm dead."

Natasha didn't deny it.

"Yes," Harry answered after a moment of silent deliberation. "If you want more than that, it's going to have to wait. You have a job to do after all."

Natasha nodded her acceptance. "Thank you for helping with this, Fred," she said softly.

"Any time, anywhere, anything," he answered solemnly. "You just have to ask."

"Thank you for that as well."

"So, these people we're going to meet... kill them all or just incapacitate for interrogation?"

"I need the boss , a man called Sepi, alive to answer questions," Natasha answered. "The others..."

"Right," Harry said with a nod of understanding. "Cover?"

"You're a business associate. We parted on good terms the last time we did business. You happened to be on vacation in the area, which is my good fortune, since you speak the language. As long as it's not out of your way, you're happy enough to do me a favour," Natasha said firmly.

Harry nodded. All essentially true. Just not the full truth. That was fine. It would be easier to remember that way.

~oOo~

It was an easy thing in the end. Greetings were made, Harry's story was explained – by Harry, and in Egyptian for credibility – and then the dealing got started with Harry strictly playing translator until Natasha signalled that they had enough information for now, and it was time to take down all the extras.

Harry stunned Sepi, causing the man to drop, and then Clint's arrows started appearing in people's chests while Natasha calmly broke the necks of anybody who came too close to her. Further S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives were called in, to clean up the mess and clean out the weapons, and Sepi was taken away to be questioned by an _official_ agent who spoke the language, rather than things having to go through Harry as translator. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who spoke Egyptian wasn't the one sent on the job because, quite simply, he wasn't field cleared at the moment. His right arm and left leg were both broken from an assignment in Jericho.

He could handle interrogation rooms though. No problem.

So, Harry was able to invite Clint and Natasha back to the house he was renting in Cairo and offer them cold drinks and air conditioning.

"So, the couple earlier," Clint started off once they'd all settled down.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I knew them. Before I started moving around and changing my name with every new country I set foot in and every new trade I tried my hand at. I _was_ Harry Potter, but he died. _I_ died. I'm just lucky, or _unlucky_ enough, that I didn't _stay_ dead."

"You haven't aged," Natasha commented. "It's been years."

"You're looking fantastic too, but you're right," Harry deferred before she could have a go at him for deliberately misunderstanding her. "I haven't aged, not since I left you guys any way, and I won't any further either. It's why I went on the move, and why I _stay_ on the move. Don't get too comfortable, get used to moving on before it's been so long people notice, that sort of thing."

~oOo~

Charles Harris left Egypt not all that long after helping Natalie Branton bring down an arms deal. It wasn't easy for S.H.I.E.L.D to keep track of the man who had been born Harry James Potter. They lost him when he was in India, going by the name Malcolm 'Mal' Drake, some five years after. He was back on their radar for a while when he visited Stark Tower – under the name Fred Westley again – and caught up with how everybody was doing and got to meet the few children that had come along since his initial time spent there. They managed to track him through Mexico (Nathan Branton, of all things), the Caribbean Islands (and he had a different name on each one), and lost him when he left them through the Bermuda Triangle. They picked him up again in Russia, going by Robert Syne, but when he left _there_ they lost him again. The only proof they had he was still alive was that people they were more able to track than _him_ were still getting emails from him fairly regularly.

~oOo~

"Have you considered Asgard?" Loki asked in the silent darkness of his room in Stark Tower. He was the only one there. "The people there are longer lived after all."

"I thought there was some 'no human' rule there," answered a familiar voice from within the small, round, folding mirror that Loki had rested on his pillow in the darkness. Light shone from within the mirror. The person on the other side was outdoors in the middle of the day. It was light enough to illuminate Loki so that he could be seen by his friend on the other end.

"A case could be made," Loki suggested.

"And leave you as the only 'immortal' on Earth in any permanent way? Nah. Too cruel. I don't go in for that. Besides, I'm having fun in Brazil right now."

"I think that S.H.I.E.L.D has stopped trying to track you now," Loki offered.

"Well, it _has_ been nearly a hundred years since I was last solidly on their radar," the voice answered, amused. "Especially since they can't track where my emails are coming from any more, and the solid leads they had for recipients of my mail have been a bit thin on the ground lately."

"Especially since you sent me this mirror and stopped needing to write to _me_," Loki pointed out. "I was their long-term safety-net for being able to find you I think."

"Well, you're still there, and you _can_ find me. Know all my cover names and everything. Even my _real_ name. I'm still impressed at how you got that out of me, but you are the Silvertongue."

"True."

~The End~


End file.
